Painting in Dust
by ElasticBobaTurtle
Summary: A collection of Naruto drabbles and oneshots. Various pairings and scenarios. Latest: She would act like she didn't notice, or didn't care; but disappointment had a way of bleeding through no matter how thickly the wound was bound. Kakashi, Sakura.
1. Cultivate

I've become a drabble/one-shot mad(wo)man. Centering on Neji and Hinata, inspired by Sintari's Rosemarty for Remembrance. Grawr.

* * *

"Neji-niisan." Her voice is a faint, terrible whisper, a brief caress on his cheek like the kiss of midnight air. He shivers imperceptibly; tries not to look at her, but his eyes are drawn to hers anyway. 

It's nighttime, and they're in the garden; her garden. He isn't sure why Hinata has asked him to meet her outside tonight; she's rarely asked anything of him, or him of her, so there's a prick of subtle suspicion and unease running through him. The scent of lilac and thyme hangs thick in the air, and he suspects that the strong scent is emanating from the thick bushes tumbling all around like a comfortable framework of life grown by her hands.

"Hinata-sama," he acknowledges her quietly with a slight bow of his head.

"I—"she begins, then stops, her fingers fidgeting with the fringe of her sleeves in a well-worn habit, eyes shifting first to the left, then back to him. She's nervous, he notes. But then she always is. She swallows a little, her throat bobbing up and down with the motion. Her feet shuffle as she toes the dirt, a picture swirling into existence in the dust before her. She takes a deep breath and then looks straight into his clear eyes. The darkness makes her face appear even paler than usual, and gaunter, too.

"I have something to tell you," she says, and surprisingly she doesn't stutter, doesn't blush. He doesn't reply, only waits patiently for her to continue, gazing steadily at her. She's prepared for this, he observes with vague curiosity.

"I—"she stops again, abruptly. And then her hands clench into small fists in front of her and she breathes out into the purple-scented air, "I'm pregnant."

For a moment all he can do is stare at her.

_Pregnant._

"I—Naruto—"she starts, and suddenly Neji's eyes narrow and he cuts her off brusquely for what may be only the second time in his life.

"Naruto?" he repeats lowly, dangerously. "_Naruto?_"

There's a hint of disbelief in his voice, but it's choked out by the sudden,barely suppressed anger clouding his voice. His jaw is tense, his whole face composed of hard lines and cold white marked with trembling shadows.

She looks at him; unable to speak, then bows her head, bangs shadowing her milky eyes.

"Tell me what this has to do with Naruto," he grinds out, like rocks between his teeth, eyes boring into her pale face. He's not sure whether this feeling crawling and gnawing inside of him is disgust or shame or –

"Tell me what you being _pregnant _has to do with Naruto," he intones flatly, betraying nothing. Self-control, self-control. Always have self-control, the voice inside of his head rants tirelessly, and right now he wants to strangle the warbling voice.

"I love him," she murmurs softly to the plants blooming at her feet, and the plants perk up their slumbering leaves, dainty green ears, to listen as her quiet words fall down on them like whispering rain.

He doesn't speak, his stomach wrenching and coiling, but he resists the urge to clench his hands into livid white-knuckled fists. Self-control, self-control, the voice sings.

"Naruto—is the father," she finishes firmly, her voice as quiet as ever but the words so loud he thinks he's going deaf, because they are screaming themselves over and over in his ears. "Neji-nii—"

He cuts her off again for the third time, feeling dimly ashamed of himself, but too angry to care. "Why are you telling me this?"

She blinks, taken aback by his question.

"Why are you telling _me _this?" he repeats, almost savagely, his words stinging briskly. "Aren't you at least _faintly_ aware of the consequences when Hyuuga-sama finds out the truth? Do you know what would happen if I told him? Do you?"

There's a note of rising panic in his voice that he immediately tries to douse, but it's still there, quivering, smothered beneath his voice.

"Yes," she says, so softly he can barely hear it, and in the way that only she can. He's wishing she would scream at him right now, but of course, she doesn't. It dawns on him that he's never heard her scream before, and he wonders what it sounds like.

"Don't you realize what you've done by telling me this? You've endangered yourself," he says again, and right now he wants to rip out a wall because of the placid, peaceful look on her face.

"Neji," she says, and she doesn't add the 'nii-san' this time. It scares him how empty and different it sounds without it, so cold. "I already know. You don't have to tell me."

"Then _why_?" he asks again, more angry than he'd like to sound. Self-control, the voice chants gleefully, jeering.

"I already told you," she explains patiently, and he hates how much she sounds like a mother reprimanding an ignorant child. Then he remembers that she _is _going to be a mother soon, and the fact turns his mind numb. "I love him."

"_Love?_ Do you even realize what you are saying?" he asks, quivering calm, blazing calm. "Do you even know what _love_ is, Hinata-_sama_?" He emphasizes the suffix on her name because she hadn't added the suffix to his. He convinces himself that it's not because he's trying to fill up the emptiness of the space between them.

"I do," she says, and it has the dreadful, hollow ring of a wedding vow. "But you don't, Neji-niisan."

He's angry and glad all at the same time. Angry because of what she's just said; glad because she hasn't left out the 'nii-san' this time.

He doesn't know what to say to this, just gazes sharply at her, his white eyes hard and unforgiving.

"You don't know what love is, Neji-niisan," she repeats to herself and to him and to the eavesdropping garden, a little sadly as she looks down at the picture she's formed from the dust beneath her toes. "I'm sorry."

Then she is shuffling carefully towards him, her ghostly hands reaching up to his face. He can't move; wants to push her away but _can't, _because he's suddenly and inexplicably paralyzed. Her hands rest momentarily on the band around his forehead, like a silver moth, and then gently, oh so gently, she unties it. The cool night air crowds around the newly exposed skin, tickling it with sly caresses. Her fingers lightly graze the mark, the curse, and it burns hot where her fingers touch it.

And then she leans forward, on her tiptoes, and kisses it with her lips.

His head is on fire.

She presses the white band back into his frozen hands, offers him one last small smile, and then turns and leaves, the sound of her sandals scraping against the ground ringing in the chorus of crickets.

When the mad tingling on his forehead has finally subsided, he awakes, realizes that she is gone and that he is alone in this tender garden of hers. He looks at the plants and they stare warily back at him, silhouettes swaying melodically in the faint breeze.

He looks down at the ground where she had been standing before, his eyes latching onto the picture painted in the dust by her toes.

It's a heart.

When he leaves the garden, he makes sure he steps on it extra hard.

* * *

Um...a little odd (when is it not?), but satisfied my drabbling euphoria for the moment. This seems a little too cliche for my taste...but it can't be helped. -.-;

Oh, and just as a note. Since this is my drabble-basket, if anyone has any requests, I'll be glad to try it out. Sometimes I want to write and don't know what to write - any suggestions are more than welcome. :D


	2. Tastes Like Rain

Gah...kinda bad.Trying outShikasaku, inspired by a scene from Fahrenheit 451,as well as deleria's "Dawning". Pardon for any OOCness. >.

* * *

It's raining. 

There are big fat drops coming down on your face, and you feel a scowl twisting its way onto your lips as a particularly large, wet one splashes in your eye. You've never liked the rain much; it's too cold, too troublesome.

You're walking down the sidewalk, and you can't wait to get home, to open the door of your achingly empty apartment and fling yourself onto the couch, just sit there and stare and think with the familiar white walls on all sides.

There are small puddles beginning to form on the dreary grey, and you narrowly sidestep one, getting half of your leg sopping. Your mouth curls into an even deeper frown and you sigh, look up at the blue-grey sky, and the falling sky comes spiraling down to meet you.

It's cold.

You shiver a little and mutter to yourself, wondering why you hadn't thought of bringing a jacket when the weatherman had _told_ you there was a 20 percent chance of rain. You should have listened, but you know you never will.

And suddenly a chill runs up your spine, and you _know_ it isn't because of the cold.

You're approaching a corner of the street, where a lamppost sits, lonely and eroded. You never really pay much mind to it on sunny days, and neither does anyone else. But today as it's raining there's a nagging suspicion about it that you can't shake off.

You know that someone is there, waiting, even though you aren't even looking.

As you draw closer, your steps slow, because you're hesitant and a little – you admit it – edgy. There's something strange and subtle hanging in the air, you can smell and taste it as you breathe it in, tickling your nostrils, and you can't help but wonder if fate is on the loose again, eager to pull pranks on unsuspecting people such as yourself.

You sigh, and pause to scratch your head, wondering what kind of troublesome things will present themselves this time.

And just as you come to the lamppost, you see her.

There's something about her that you just can't put your finger on. She's different; that's all you can tell.

And she's smiling.

You're not sure what she's smiling at, aren't sure if you really want to know. And just as you think you might be able to slip past this strange girl without her noticing, she suddenly turns and smiles right _at_ you.

Your muscles freeze, and you stop.

You're not sure what you're supposed to do, and you're shocked when you hear yourself saying, "Hey, what are you doing out in the rain?"

You blink, because you can't believe you just spoke and you're wondering since when has speaking become an _in_voluntary action. She cocks her head and looks at you, and for the first time you notice that she has green eyes.

And pink hair.

It really is a strange combination.

You finally shake yourself awake when you realize that she's speaking to you. You notice that she has a pleasant voice. "I like the rain," she says.

You can't help but quirk an eyebrow then, because you yourself aren't too keen on rain. "I can see that," you say slowly. And then, unexpectedly you ask, "Why?"

She laughs a little, and you notice that it's pleasant, just like the rest of her tinkling voice. It reminds you of chimes you'd heard when you were a kid.

"Because it tastes good," she says, and laughs her tinkling little laugh again. You can't help but feel surprised, because you weren't expecting such an absurd answer. "Ever tasted it before?" she asks.

"No," you say, and it's the truth. You wonder to yourself why anyone would want to taste the rain when it's unfiltered and filled with bacteria. But you don't say anything about germs; just smile awkwardly while hoping she won't push the subject any further.

"You should try it," she says, and you grimace inwardly, but keep up your strained smile. You try to think of a polite way to refuse, but she continues, oblivious. "It tastes like wine."

"I never would have known," you say, and it's the truth again. She smiles, and hers is genuine. You feel a little guilty because your smile if fake and you know it. So you finally give up and stop smiling. Besides, it's starting to hurt your cheeks and it's troublesome, too, pretending.

Both of you stand there for a while, and you're fingers begin to fidget restlessly. You sigh loudly and look up at the sky again, wondering what you're supposed to do. You really want to get home now, but you don't want to be rude.

Finally, you break the dripping silence. "Look—don't you have somewhere to go?" you ask off-handedly.

She's busy tasting the rain, her head tilted and mouth parted slightly. She looks up, surprised, when she hears your question, and then a little flustered.

"Oh yeah, I forgot! The rain makes me forgetful," she laughs apologetically, and you think again of those ancient silver chimes. "Thanks for reminding me. I've got to get going, then. It was nice talking to you."

"Yeah," you reply, scratching your head. You watch as she walks off, her rosy hair damp with rain. Just as you're about to walk off yourself, she turns around suddenly, and calls out in her clear, ringing voice, green eyes glowing, "See you around?"

You're caught off guard for the briefest moment, and then you start to grin, and this time it's not forced.

"Yeah," you call back.

Then she turns back around and takes off running, her steps light and pattering on the sidewalk, synchronizing with the rain. The grin on your face spreads wider, and your hand reaches up and runs through your hair. It's wet from standing in the rain so long, but for once you find that you don't mind _too _much, and consider for the briefest moment that it might even feel good.

What a strange girl, you think.

And when no one is looking, you tilt your head back and open your mouth…

_--Rainy days only means wet dreams--_

X-x-x-x-x-x-x

Experimenting with a new perspective, as you can see.

Btw, I'm probably going to be updating this like crazy, because my mind just spews out junk out liek whoah. So...yeah.Keke. ;;


	3. Unpredictable

Yay. Had to get that out of my system.

* * *

There's blood on his hands, and all of it is hers. 

It's delightfully sticky and sweet; it strikes him as odd because he's tasted his own blood before, a long time ago, and it was salty. But hers is undeniably sweet.

He licks his lips unconsciously; dry and cracked lips that match his dry and cracked mask of sand and wind and a stolen childhood. His head tilts towards her, a curious angle she cannot decipher.

Is it a taunt? A question?

She cannot tell.

Her skin shivers because she is indescribably cold. She isn't quite sure _why_ it's this cold; it shouldn't be, because the sun is shining right in her eyes and she can feel sweat sliding down the back of her neck.

But it's cold.

When he reaches out, she recoils.

It's a sudden reflex, a violent urging that burns her veins. She starts shaking all over again, because the cold has just become unbearably colder. But his hand keeps reaching, an inexorable thing of fate—and she can't move. She is frozen with the cold.

His touch is cool and dry, like a snake's skin rubbing against her cheek, a quiet, whispering sensation that blurs the line between disgusting and addicting. Her stomach turns abruptly and she can't understand it.

His fingertips leave streaks of blood on her skin. He is a painter and she is a blank canvas of fear.

Her eyes are locked with his, green and green catching, and as much as she wants to pull away from his gaze, this frightening gaze of his, she _can't_. He doesn't let her. Neither of them blink; him because he doesn't need to, her because she isn't able to.

She can see herself reflected in his eyes, and it scares her. A scream bubbles up her throat like a beautiful, unsung melody, but his gaze kills it before it is born, kills it mercilessly and without remorse. When she swallows, she swallows the carcass of the scream; it is a thick, cold, and nameless lump in her throat. It tastes uncannily like blood; and then she realizes that she's bitten her tongue.

Then he kisses her, and neither of them knows why.

His lips taste like sand and salt and her blood. Her lips taste sweet and cold and beautiful.

She gasps when his lips leave hers; she's not sure if she wants to laugh or puke right now, or maybe even do both, if she can somehow manage.

He doesn't feel anything remarkable, doesn't even realize that this was his first _kiss_; he is only aware of the aftertaste of her blood that tingles pleasantly on his lips. Shukaku is cackling uncontrollably, and for once he thinks he understands why, and doesn't even mind the hollowness that echoes loudly inside of him.

When he starts to laugh, she begins to cry.

She hasn't cried since she was twelve. The tears on her face are hot, and she is faintly comforted by the fact that they aren't cold like the rest of her body is.

Her face is numb from her tears and the blood on her face, but mostly from the memory of his touch. Her thoughts have devolved into blind feelings, sensations, and none of it makes the slightest bit of sense.

Her lips are aching, and suddenly she wishes he would kiss her again, just to make the aching stop.

So she kisses him, fiercely.

It surprises the both of them, and then it morphs into a kind of mutual agreement, an indifferent consent that cannot be justified by words.

Her tears only make her blood taste sweeter, after all.

She tries to pretend that it's someone else she is kissing; but in truth she is only kissing the impossible, tasting the nothing that cushions her dreams. As hard as she wishes that this man's hair was black, as hard as she wishes that this man's eyes were cold and red with bloodlust and had wheels that made her blood tremble wonderfully, his hair remains as red as ever, his eyes still green.

Wishing never did make things any better.

Her crying chokes her kiss, and she breaks it for air, gasping it in like she can't do anything else—perhaps she can't. He watches her with an unreadable expression, and it irks her how calm he is. It irks her because she wishes she could be like him.

She slaps him.

The sound is crisp and decisive, like the crack of a whip, a gunshot. Her hand is shaking terribly and she looks at it, shocked, as if it is a traitor.

He doesn't blink.

The imprint of her hand reddens his cheek, guilty and accusing and vividly burning her eyes. She looks at him, fearful; she isn't sure if he is going to kill her right then and there or torture her slowly and painfully. She's hoping fervently for the former.

The sand is hissing angrily in her ears, now, circling around like a serpent to its prey.

The sand had been ready, had warned him—but he had let her. He isn't quite sure why he _let_ her slap him. All he knows is that it feels good, and he relishes the stinging blossoming on his cheek like a poisonous flower, this marvelously unfamiliar sensation.

She falls to her knees.

She cries harder than when she had lost her first best friend, cries even harder than that night _he_ had left her, cries harder than she ever has, and feels like she is going to explode. Her fingers clutch at him, tear at him savagely, and he's puzzled because he can't refuse her.

The sounds that rip from her throat are far from beautiful, but he loves them still, these ugly, breath-taking sounds of hers.

The sand curls around them, wraps around them like a mother's close embrace. He feels safe this way, in this bubble of sand and fake mother's caresses, with her scratching him with her nails and screaming at him at the top of her lungs.

He likes it this way.

She wants to hate this, the way he is holding her awkwardlyand the way it makes her feel impossibly _good._ She wants to hate it, but she can't. He doesn't let her.

Love never is predictable.

_--First kisses are cold; second kisses are all the better—_

X-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

oo Um. That was decidedly...absurd. Gack. I find the Gaasaku pairing rather intriguing; I always see it as a twisted sort of relationship...but that's just me. Might be writing more of this pairing, so beware of utter weirdness.


	4. Streaked

Gaara is holding my muse captive. ;;

_

* * *

The sky is falling and streaked with blood;_

_I heard you calling me_

_And then you disappeared _

_Into the dust._

_--Into the Fire, Bruce Springsteen_

_­­­­­_-

The sound of red raining rings beautifully through the clearing, like the mellow call of a nightingale; there is a faint musical quality about it that only jaded ears like his can hear. Everywhere, the sand bustles and swishes, skimming on one great, smooth belly, one great, smooth beast, devouring with grainy, expert fangs, the blood melting tiredly into the sand as it engulfs him fully, wonderfully.

There's a smile of red rust reflected in his eyes.

He turns to the nameless face before him. The man's hands are trembling as they sweat helplessly, knuckles white. A smile bares his teeth; he grins, and the man stumbles suddenly backwards.

The sand tickles imploringly. _More,_ it whispers.

_Yes, more_, he agrees with wide green eyes.

Eager, it advances on the man, slowly, swiftly, quietly, loudly; a serpentine existence that winds itself seductively around the fear in this man, like a fig vine around a sapling tree, choking; wraps him in a warm cocoon, squeezing him tight, possessively.

_Your blood, _it murmurs into the stranger man's ear, a fatal secret of the ancient, and he lets out a strangled gasp as his eyes plead into the blank eyes of the sole spectator, the young monster with his cocked head, his eerie expression of nearly irrefutable innocence. The sand presses in closer.

_Mine,_ it hisses, and the man can feel the nonexistent tongue flicking lightly against his cheek, a searing kiss of death. He yells hoarsely.

He smiles faintly at the scream; it magnifies with the sound of warm, new blood falling lightly to the earth, the pattering footsteps of a child, the silent _whooshing_, like flower-scented wind in a spring shower. One giant fist clenches and crushes, the sand pulsing in one unanimous motion, seamless and graceful and flawless.

It's strange, now; how the whole world turns red at the sight of one man's blood. He doesn't mind, though—not at all. It's nice.

The sand retreats back to him, back to the boy, bloodied and bloodless all at once; and it rumbles softly, the purring of a thunderous cat in lazy satisfaction, tamed into a kitten of contentment.

He surveys this lurid handiwork, at the blood splattered on the dusty floor that twists and blends to form a rustic latticework of lace and life.

He looks up to the sky and it is a hazy red too, red as the figure of love branded hotly on his forehead; it is really nothing but an entity of his hate, but it adds wonderfully to the irony of it all, doesn't it?

Irony is sweet.

A sudden sound attracts his attention, and he turns slowly to face the issuer of this lovely sound. It is a small, frail girl with cropped hair, with scraped knees and dirt-streaked face, with mud-encrusted fingernails, who lets out a clipped sob as she falls to her knees in a puff of fairy's dust, so magical is the way that the dust lights up around her. She wriggles most curiously on her stomach, clutching at the blood-soaked dust, claws her nails into it, clutches desperately at it, fills her hands full of it. But the dust runs painfully through, leaves her hands empty as ever and all the more dirty. She cries silently to herself all the while, cries herself a prayer, a pleading of hot tears.

He watches in mild curiosity, wonders how he hadn't noticed her up until now, and knows instantly he will never forget this girl.

Memory is absurd by nature.

Her sniffling is loud and childish, and when she speaks, her sobs choke out the evident anger, and the question ends up sounding helpless rather than threatening.

"Do you know what you've done?"

Does he?

"No," he answers truthfully, though he doesn't find the truth very enlightening at all. The little girl makes a sad attempt at a laugh; very sad indeed. Her laugh ends up as a wrenched sob, thin fingers knitting together in ridiculous determination, even sadder than her laugh-cry.

"You've killed my father."

Had he really?

"But he was only a man," he says, hatefully unperturbed, the words sounding hollow in his own ears, but he ignores that fact blissfully.

"_Only_ a man?" the girl repeats, in a way that makes him feel suddenly stupid and dumb like he's never felt before; this girl, a complete stranger who is years younger than him, years wiser.

"Wasn't he a man?" he asks, and the question is dead and stupid just like he feels. Such a strange feeling.

The tears are wet and shining on her ashen cheeks.

"Yes, he was a man," she says solemnly, and her pale, heart-shaped face is so somber it makes him almost sad, though not quite. "More of a man than you'll ever be."

The last statement intrigues him.

"Why do you say that?" he asks out of pure inquisitiveness. It's strange how this girl isn't afraid of him, when her father—the man—had so obviously been. Such a strange girl, she is, so beautifully full of contradictions.

"Men don't kill," she declares, proudly, and for a moment the crying girl in her is gone, replaced by this new, confident one.

"If that's so, then you are right," he says, slowly, deliberately. "I'm not a man."

"You aren't," she confirms with a deadly serious expression, with her childish approval that is somehow the only approval he needs. "But if you aren't a man—then what _are _you?"

What was he?

The words come out of his mouth before he can think, before he realizes the truth in them. "A monster."

Her brow creases slightly and her clear grey eyes grow dark and cloudy. "A monster," she whispers softly, more to herself than to him. "What—what do monsters do?"

The air crackles with the warning of thunder.

"Monsters kill."

She looks straight into his eyes, her young, weathered ones reflecting the storm-flecked clouds in the sky. "Why?"

It's funny when he thinks about it later on, how they're conversing so easily as the blood of her father, the man, grows cold beneath her very fingertips.

"They must."

And the rain begins to fall, heavily.

It whispers all of her words and all of his own words back to him, a quiet and seething witness that burns all it touches, angry acid instilled with bitter memories. The sand hovers steadily above him, blocking out the bleary sky, the fat drops of water splattering everywhere.

The girl gets wet, watching him stay dry.

It suddenly occurs to him that he's never felt rain on his skin before.

Soon the girl is shivering, her skin ornamented with goose-bumps and chilled as her cold, grey eyes, clothes clinging to her frail body, her stick-thin body—but she doesn't say anything. The blood on the ground begins to run, begins to wash away and fade, erasing the legacies and life of this nameless _man _in a matter of moments; she watches it slip through her fingers, and doesn't cry, because she somehow understands she no longer needs to.

He steps towards her; she looks up and regards him blankly, rain and dark bangs falling in her eyes, but never once covering them.

He stands close beside her, so that the sand shields the both of them from the sheets of clear, stinging rain. She stares at him, and when she speaks, her voice is so calm, so smooth and so old; certainly it cannot be the voice of a child.

"If you're a monster, are you going to kill me?"

The rain tap dances on the ground, feet light and watery.

"Yes."

-

When the rain stops, there's still blood on the ground.

* * *

Just to clarify, this girl is a random little girl that was fabricated from the corners of my mind for my purposes only. I was thinking of making her Sakura, but obviously...that wouldn't work. So she's just a littlegirl, who had the very bad misfortune of being in my story. >>;

Sorry for the OOCness.


	5. Phenomenon

Short Kakasaku.

* * *

"You visit here a lot, don't you?" 

Her words took him by surprise, though he didn't show it. He turned away from her, his expression blank save for the imperceptible twitch of his eye, stood and turned his face up to the gaping grey sky, the condescending clouds drawing their great brows together in skepticism, in superior disapproval. The air rumbled deeply with yawning thunder, sent a simultaneous shiver up both their spines. They felt each other shiver at the same instant; such an odd, tingling sensation, a small phenomenon that felt bigger than it was.

He didn't say anything; he didn't need to. Words always ruined things. Besides, she was smart, always had been, and didn't need him to answer her questions any longer. She didn't need him any longer.

He didn't quite understand why this acknowledgement made him faintly sad, the kind of feelings he'd always thought were reserved for old sentimental fogies, never thought _he_ would be the feeler of. It really was strange; he stubbornly pushed the feeling aside, did his best to ignore it so that it was only a prick in the back of his mind, a subtle, unheeded prick of nothing, nothing at all.

It was nothing, really.

"Kind of funny that I never knew, you being my sensei for all these years," she said with wry eyes, because the silence made her uncomfortable, sent itching goose bumps up her arms.

He didn't say anything again, only closed his eyes and breathed in the crackling air, savored the wet, earthy scent and exhaled silently to himself. She sighed at the exact same moment, and the same phenomenon occurred again, only stranger than before, magnified by her goose bumps.

"I—" she began, then stopped. "How long has it been?"

He stiffened momentarily at the question, wondering to himself, how long _had _it been? Too many years now; he couldn't remember. He didn't care to, anyhow. He felt suddenly very old. For a moment he saw a flash of red in the sky, the red of bloody eyes and the foolish grin of a foolish, foolish boy.

He blinked, and the red was gone.

"I don't know," he said, and her head bowed slightly, eyes big and green and sad, a child's eyes, a child's faith, encased in the hard, weathered mind of a woman, the body of a woman.

"It's been two years since…" she bit her lip, then forced the words out in gritted determination. "Since Sasuke left us."

Kakashi saw another flash of red, this time brighter, very nearly blinding. He had to blink twice this time, before the red disappeared.

"Yeah," he murmured finally, because that was all he could manage at the moment; his left eye throbbed angrily, accusingly. Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut.

A drop of rain fell on his lips.

The wet seeped through his mask, a pinpoint of sweet cold.

"It's raining," she said, simply.

"Yeah."

The rain drowned the world in its dripping silence, and he was glad because he no longer needed to talk. They listened to the soft _whooshing_ as it skittered across the yellow, stubby grass, across the cold, looming stone before them, across the names on the stone, a scrawl of unreadable lives, between the two of them.

He felt the luminous stare of the four ancient, regal faces on him, the craggy noses, the jaded eyes, the untapped wisdom; he tried not to look, but his eyes turned to them anyways. His gaze lingered on the fourth one a while longer than the rest before he finally tore his eyes away, despite their biting protest, forced himself to look up at the sky, because he had nowhere else to look. He didn't want to look at her.

A drop of rain fell in his eye. It burned.

She shivered, he shivered; the same phenomenon a thousand times over.

He wasn't quite sure when she had begun to cry, but he heard her through the rain—or rather, _in _the rain, because together the sky and her wept in perfect coincidence. His eyes continued to burn with vengeful persistence, and Kakashi thought he saw blood falling from the sky instead of tears.

This time, the red remained.

X-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Yeyuh. Was overcome with a sudden urge to write about Kakashi. Ah yes...my dear Kakashi. Not much else to say. :D


	6. Try to Sleep

Cherqwuite.Don't ask.Right now I only have the capacity to write short things. ;;

* * *

Sleep laps deliciously near; he tries to grasp it and it flees without warning, slips between the cracks of his fingers. He awakes from a sleep that never was, groans, and rolls over. 

He listens to the aching of his body; tries to soothe it, but it will not be soothed—an implacable monster of his deeds, of his mistakes that will not settle to be forgotten. _Stupid_, it hisses. _Stupid child._

Slithering along his shoulder, up his neck, the whisper's tongue flicking lightly against his ear, and it tickles delightfully. His eyes widen and he is young again, and for a moment the cry of the implacable monster ceases, for a heavenly moment.

_He turns and sees the brown of a wall, the green of weeds and grass, the blinding white of drying sheets. The gold of glittering eyes._

_An irresistible look of dark elegance; effortlessly charming, and all at once he is captivated, drawn like a gasping fish to water. Reaching, reaching without knowing, his childishly clumsy fingers do not shake as they stretch to stroke the sleek head, the hypnotizing eyes it holds._

(Stupid child)

_The touch is cold and smooth, burns his young skin, and seals his fate interminably. The touch remains on his fingertips for all time; cannot get rid of it, is not sure if he wants to._

_The eyes do not flicker, do not change; remain magnificently cold. _Such pretty eyes_, he thinks, and he is filled with dislike for his ordinary black ones, the ones that always want to cry when Nii-san flicks him on the forehead and says predictably, not now. Another time._

(Another life)

_The eyes say, _come. Be like me.

_And the child freezes for a moment, in perplexity, in a little fear, in suffocating excitement. _Be like me. Be beautiful, be graceful, be deadly.

_He thinks of his father's stern face and wonders if he was beautiful and graceful and deadly, would Father be proud? Proud the way he is of Nii-san?_

Yes,_ the eyes answer to the unspoken question. _Yes.

_And, the child thinks, will Nii-san be proud, too? Will Nii-san notice?_

Yes, _the eyes answer._ Yes.

_The child believes._

(Another lie)

_Nothing changes the eyes, and the child admires them once again. Inside the house he hears something shatter, hears his mother sigh to herself as she stoops to sweep up the broken pieces._

(It will fall)

It is time, _the eyes say. _Now or never.

_The child chooses the now, does not have time to ponder it, because suddenly the snake strikes out and the little fangs pierce his skin in sweet sharp pain, and the child watches in gruesome fascination as the eyes stare into his own, teeth embedded in his outstretched hand. A little bubble of blood seeps out. One drop, two._

(Into place)

_Slowly, oh-so-slowly, the snake withdraws its fangs, teeth coming out painfully. For a moment it simply stares at the boy, and then decisively, it flicks its tail back in satisfaction and smoothly slithers into the tall grass, gone._

_The boy looks at his hand, to make sure that this is real, that it had not been a trick of mind. The blood on his hand screams bright red, everything contained in one drop, two drops. Fang marks read like the words of the unchangeable._

(Red as blood)

He blinks and he is old again, and the implacable monster resumes its long, mournful cry. His body hurts all over in dull aches, but it is his hand that hurts the most, the very same hand. There is a small scar—a smooth scar faded through the years but never fully healed: punctures so precise, they are undoubtedly the work of an expert. He brings his hand level to his eyes and he studies the scars; sees two golden eyes staring back instead.

Startled, he drops his hand.

(Everything will break.)

_At night, the child cries._

* * *

If you couldn't tell, it was about Sasuke. It really doesn't make much sense. Just some spammage. :D 


	7. Shut Up

A sort of twisted piece.

* * *

"He's dead," she says, and her eyes are as dead and cold as the words she speaks. 

He doesn't reply.

"He's dead," she repeats, more to herself than to him. "Naruto's dead."

And suddenly it hits her fully and she falls to her knees, clutches her head, and screams till the sky turns red. She looks at him with pleading eyes, with green, frightened eyes, and he is reminded of the eyes of a trapped animal, a dying animal.

"Naruto is _dead_!" she screeches at the top of her lungs, and somehow it sounds like the notes of a song, the way she screams them so beautifully, so horribly. She spits the words at him, and they scratch like wild-cats, with sharp fangs and claws, scratch at his eyes and face—he feels them sting. Her voice echoes harshly through the trees; the birds take flight in blissful alarm.

She claws viciously at the dirt with her nails, as if it is responsible for his death; her nails leave little jerky chicken-scratches all over. Her hair falls in her face in a ragged way, in her crazed, glazed eyes. He can hear her loud breathing rasping in his ears, so distinctly hers, and not hers all at once. Who is she, this stranger?

He is scared.

Scared for her, or scared of her, he cannot tell. Maybe it's both, but all the same, the fear boils in the pit of his stomach, makes him lurch. Kakashi feels suddenly and impossibly sick. He closes his eyes, tries to steady himself while her scream rings cruelly in his ears, and suddenly wants to tell her to shut up.

He wishes he could be the one screaming on his knees right now, screaming to the sky; wishes he didn't have to be the damned stoic with his damned mask but knows he can't change it now, the fate he had set in stone so long ago, branded in the names of the damned memorial.

There's going to be a new name on it soon, he thinks.

When she grasps at his vest with her helpless hands and shakes him, he is _startled-afraid-disgusted-_ and just barely keeps from recoiling—can't understand why he suddenly hates her so much, this girl-woman with her ugly look of despair, her ugly crying _why can't she grow up and why is she touching him?_

_What is he going to do and why doesn't she just shut up and go away?_

This is all making him feel very, very sick.

But he just stands there, and it takes everything to just stand there and stand still.

He can't understand what the girl is screaming at him, only knows that it hurts his ears and sounds horrible, cacophony.

_Shut up shut up shut up shut up_

His hands are trembling clenched at his sides and she continues to hold his vest with her dirty hands and cracked fingernails, her knuckles so white. He wishes she would stop holding onto him.

_Let go let go let go let go_

It's getting harder and harder to breathe and still she screams like no tomorrow, and maybe there isn't one, anyways, so what does it matter? He hopes there isn't, wishes that he was never born so that he would never have to hear the girl-woman scream in his ears and hold on to his vest—he's going to have to wash it when he gets back to get rid of her feel and wash it well—or maybe he'll just burn it.

He'll just burn it.

_Burn it burn it burn it burn it_

It's the only thing he can think of, and it's the best thing he's ever thought of. It's a brilliant idea. Burn it!

Get rid of all of this, get rid of the feel of this girl that's all over the place—but the whole place is infested with it—everywhere, everywhere, everywhere! He breathes her in and his nostrils burn with the stench of her and he wants to puke.

He wonders to himself how he ever thought she was a nice girl, a smart girl, wonders how he could have ever faintly admired her, wonders—

_Why why why why why_

Maybe he should slap her so she'll shut up, because if she doesn't stop soon he's going to start screaming, too. And of course he can't scream, because if he does than everything he ever fought for would be pointless and everything they ever _died _for would be done and gone.

Surely Obito wouldn't approve.

But for some strange reason he can't slap her—it's as if some alien force is keeping his hand from slapping _why doesn't it let him she deserves it—_

So he does the only thing he can think of to make her shut up, hates himself eternally after.

He kisses her.

Crushes her lips to his and swallows the sound of her scream down his throat _oh it tastes horrible _but he keeps sucking down the noise from her throat until there isn't any left.

Silence is golden.

X-x-x-x-x-x-

I warned you this time, didn't I? Butchered grammar was partially intentional. Gyah, this one was bad. Bad. Pardon the spammage.


	8. Sycamore

In a place where she nods and he smiles, and there is no sense of duty or obligation that forces his lips to turn up in a tight line. When she doesn't have to look away under his steely gaze—when she can look him straight in the eyes and there is no fear, because there is no hate to be afraid of.

In a place where Hanabi grins always and it is a child-grin that only children can grin. In a place where they come together and laugh under the shade of a broad sycamore tree, and the laugh is not, God forbid, _polite_ laughter but real laughter, the kind that brings little tears dancing in the corners of your eyes and makes your stomach ache horribly because you're so _happy_ and makes you wish the laugh would never end, wish that it would just go on and on and on…

In a place where the elders and servants in the courtyard don't _tsk tsk _or _cluck cluck_ with their tongues against the roof of their mouths, that small popping sound of disapproval; and even if the elders and servants in the courtyard do _tsk tsk_, it doesn't matter.

In a place where Hiashi doesn't look at Hinata and think of her always with a tray of tea balanced in her hands; but instead looks at her and sees his daughter; nothing more, nothing less. Because that is all she has ever asked for.

In a place where it doesn't matter if people talk behind their backs, because the three of them simply think to themselves, _we can kick their asses any day._

And Hinata will be able to think this thought without blushing, because in this place, Hinata can speak all the profanities she wishes, be as un-Hinata-ish as she wants.

In a place where it doesn't matter if what they're facing is impossible, because they just think:

_We can do whatever we want and no one can ever stop us._

_We can face the world and knock it flat._

_We can do this together._

_We can be._

_We can._

_We…_

But there is no 'we'. Because in _this _place, when she nods and he smiles, the smile is forced, and she must always look away from his steely gaze for fear of the hate in his eyes.

Because in _this _place, the grin that Hanabi grins is not the grin of a child. Because in _this _place, they can never sprawl under the shade of a sycamore tree and laugh together, because for one, there are no sycamore trees where they live, and two, they don't know how to laugh.

Because in _this _place, the elders and servants are forever _tsk tsking _and _cluck clucking_, and always they hear it, and for some reason, it always seems to matter.

Because in _this _place, Hiashi looks at Hinata and can never think of her as anything more than the tea-girl, cannot see that she is really only his daughter.

Because in _this _place, Hinata must be Hinata, Neji must be Neji, and Hanabi must be Hanabi, and that is that.

Because there is no other place but here.

X-x-x-x-x—x


	9. Tiny Tragedies

Every day is a tiny tragedy for her.

The days pile up into weeks and soon enough she finds she has before her the biggest tragedy the world has ever known, this sudden miracle comprised of all these little jigsaw pieces, the small itching moments when things didn't go quite her way or when Sasuke didn't care (which was forever), or when Naruto was just so _different, _so much _better _than her (which was forever, too; she just didn't know it). All the times that she had to look at their backs and they didn't even _know_ she was looking at their backs—only saw one another, and not the pink-haired little girl with her broken, hoping smile, trembling. Her cries are only background music to the melodrama that belongs to them alone.

Small things grow into big things; just like the mustard seed grows into a monstrous tree when one least expects it. One day you look out the window into the yard and you find in the place of what was nothing, yesterday, a giant _thing _today and you think _when did that ever happen? How did it happen?_

No one can really understand it—she tries not to. So are the tragedies that grow in a heap on her plate, like a pile of radishes that never diminishes, only grows larger and larger till the shadow is a mammoth that darkens her eyes, the flaking cough of charcoal. One day, she knows the whole pile will come crashing down in a phenomenon not of this age, in a disaster that will surely shake the foundations of history itself.

So she believes, and so we shall let her.

Only the collapse of this tower of tragedies is really a subtle, sleek thing, like the undermining of an empire. The creeping of a burglar into a house, oh-so-quiet—not loud, not filled with great brazen trumpeting—but much quieter, and grander on a sadder scale. It is a magnificent thing in its own right, but not many people appreciate real art these days.

All the pieces will come sliding, tumbling head over heels, _whooshing_; the beautiful noise of things falling apart. An avalanche on Mount Everest multiplied by tenfold—all of it will come sweeping into her arms like children once lost, will overwhelm her in an achingly sweet manner, like when you eat something so packed with sugar and sticky your teeth hurt. She relishes the feeling of that panicky suffocation, of _it _filling her mouth and nostrils so she chokes just _so_, so her lungs crush along with her skull and mediocre aspirations. It will kill her, she knows, but she embraces this fact with an eagerness that is strange and unfamiliar.

And while she wallows dead in this puddle, this bloated flood of creations not her own, the two boys will not realize it, will not bat an eyelash, much less shed a tear. For the show goes on, background music or not. After all, she never was much of a crucial part, was she?

It is sad, a twisted rendition of Echo and her fake-lover Narcissus, the parts a little tweaked but the basis the same. At least she knows that they will both die in the end, too, but even that doesn't comfort her much these days. She wishes she could die along with them, share that beautiful grief of being a part of something, but she knows they won't _let _her share it. She isn't enough; she isn't right. It would make everything wrong; make everything sour, they insist. The threesome had always been a twosome. She had always been a onesome. She had no one with which to enact the melodrama of her dreams, of her sick, tired envy; only herself.

And playing all the parts yourself, without any audience to laugh and cry and scream with you, is never any fun.

* * *

A very strange bit of writing; jumbled and pretty senseless. It's about Team 7, if you couldn't tell. Yay for spammage, because I have nothing better to do with my life. xD 


	10. Wings Are Meant to Be

"He isn't good enough, is he?"

Her question is one with no answer. She asks it only because she needs to hear it fall from her own jaded tongue, to wrap her mind around the solid fact of it. So much of her life has been dreams and tainted air. Something needs to be grounded. The wings she wears are made of dead hopes stuck together with the paste of fooling oneself; today they must be stripped away.

"No," he says. "He isn't."

She fancies the words have an almost-sad lilt to them, but knows that he is not capable of such a thing. No longer can he work such miracles as emotion and passion; the only magic he works now is that of death and silence, of cold and meticulous destruction. Somehow, though, he is still a beautiful creature to behold.

(in her eyes, at least)

"Do you ever wonder…what it would _be_ like if he was?" she asks, thoughtfully.

"Always," he replies. It's the truth if she's ever heard him speak it (which is never; his truths are always drowned in the syrupy lies, the screams buried deep beneath in the sickness of too much sweet).

"And what…_what _is the outcome?" The question is cautious. She is still afraid of the process of ripping away (it is new to her—you must not expect so much); just as a child fears the dentist as he prepares to pull the tooth, extract the excruciating root with a silver shining fang.

"He dies; I live. His death at my hands." He blinks mutedly, seeming barely interested and very much bored. It amazes her how easily, smoothly he says the words, as if he has said them so many times that the taste has numbed to nothing but a _dis_taste. They are a milky film, a truth worn to a thin plastic sheath that contains nothing more than a hole through which to fall.

_Here we are,_

_falling again, o__nly faster this time—_

_Will we ever learn…?_

Somehow she doubts it. He may be a genius, and she may be sharp, but mistakes are ever cleverer, with mincing steps to match.

"He's coming soon. You'll be ready?" she asks, already knowing the answer. Her questions no longer have meaning, and still she asks them, kills them again and again in their dead-alive sleep as they lay, twitching in the grave. Is she really that _useless_?

"I've been waiting too long," he says, his eyes steadily red as ever. The sun burns and his eyes along with it; the red will never fade even as the sun dies to a warm glow, content to burrow in the embrace of its own ashes. He will out-burn the Sun! (think of that!)

Besides, there is no rain to wash the red away. She is nothing but a drop against a mountain-side of ancient royalty. She pretends that she has a role in the story, but knows she is nothing but an ink smear on the page; an "accident", so to speak. She was never meant to be.

But here she is, and so is he.

Together they ponder Fate.

X-x-x--x

Itasaku...? Well. It's supposed to be Itachi and Sakura discussing Sasuke. Something along those lines. Sorry it was very vague, and well, pointless. Starting to get into the writing groove again. ;;


	11. Curse

* * *

The warmth of life seeps onto his fingertips in the angriest of hues. It gnaws hungrily, a venomous, suckling bite; and there it stains happily. He watches the red spread wider and deeper, to the grooves of his callused palm. It is a fascination that he, for once, cannot conquer…

Her soft coughing brings him back. The warmth on his fingers turns lukewarm and sticky, and the combination sickens him. He wipes the blood hard, gritting, across the cold rough floor, trying to rid himself of the _feel_—but still it shivers slyly up his spine. He shudders.

She coughs again, stirring barely. He crawls on his bruised knees carefully over to her side, bringing himself closer so that he can make out her pale-milk face matted now with blood and sweat and crystallized salt. He listens to her quiet rasp, the faintest scratch of a mouse's paws against the wall.

"Idiot," he whispers hoarsely, injecting a feeble exasperation that does nothing but make her smile in her death-beautiful-sleep. His throat burns with shame and a sudden, irrepressible weakness (he's tried to be strong for too long and now everything is crumbling away beneath him). He has barely known this girl for half a lifetime; and already she is slowly bleeding away her light into his darkness.

The colors touch blindly; spindly fingers of growing-pained trees meeting for the first time. They stretch across the sky and scar it with their gentle brilliance.

Everything is lost in the middle of anonymity, of being nameless and faceless. _Loveless for a thousand years._

"There is," he breathes heavily, on his scratched-tingling elbows, "a difference between self-sacrifice and suicide."

Her lips twitch into a last mischievous smile. After half a minute, she speaks through cracked lips. "…I know."

Her whisper is a single shard of glass drawn scraping against concrete. Her eyes are closed and he wonders what is happening behind them. _(will the green forever leak away from behind the pale window-blind lashes?)_

He needs to be certain of something. "Open your eyes," he says suddenly, the tiny alarm ringing in his voice.

Her brows crease together, crinkled vanilla paper, but her eyes remain still closed and shadowed. "…Why?" she breathes dryly, and he can tell it pains her to speak, to breathe, to live.

"Just do it," he says urgently, suddenly more shaken than he ever has been in his life.

_Let me be sure of one thing. _

Her eyes shift and move weakly beneath the folds of her eyelids. And then she begins to cough; softly at first, and then more violently, and then it frightens him how loud and hacking it is, and the sound of cough is the whole world contained and spewing from her lips. One heavy cough brings the blood to her lips (a juniper drop), and the blood splatters onto the floor before her in delicate butterfly-wing patterns. Her body convulses and she lies still for one dreadful moment.

"Open your eyes!" he croaks, and does not recognize this strangling, octopus desperation as his own. He is begging her now, pleading on his _knees _and_ elbows _to the churning of his stomach, _please, just this once_! _I will never ask for anything else_! Dignity and pride are suddenly nothing more than useless crowns of glittery stone that leave bruises and scars upon his shorn head.

_One thing!_

She scrunches her eyes tighter shut in a fierce grimace. "Sasuke…" she whispers, half-whimpers. The cough takes over her body again, and she is nothing more than loud hollow sound and frail leaf.

_And the blood falling from her lips again! _**One thing!**

"Please, Sakura, open them!" he shouts blindly, madly, above the consuming, growing cough. The cough howls in protest and will not let her rest in peace, kicks and kicks her now failing, now almost-dead body; winds waging war. She is caught in the eye of a hurricane, and air is slowly leaking away to become the feathers of lost angels.

_What will he breathe when she is gone?_

She coughs the color from her cheeks and the pink from her hair, the pink of her lips away to the bitter, savage red of blood. He watches the process of her deterioration and can do nothing but watch with the _eyes _that _see _the things he doesn't want to see.

_He knew the curse to be true all along._

…But what was she?

* * *

This was actually first intended to be a Nejisaku, but then I thought that Sasusaku would be more fitting for this situation. Anyways, there you go. Spam. :D


	12. Handmedown

She awoke to the sound of rain.

It dripped from the window and tapped with clear beckoning fingers, white-beaded necklaces thrown down. The sky was muddy and the road was a tired face, all wrecked with age lines from the ruts of passing horse-carts. She looked out the window and thought of her favorite things.

One crow circled in the sky as the rain fell, shuddering.

She arose from bed in silent grace (the wrinkles of her dress invisible) and shuffled over to her nightstand. Today was the day, she reminded herself. She reached for her hitaite and slipped it into her palm, remembering the cold.

The metal smiled in her hand.

She stood before the mirror and looked square into her own eye. Slowly, she brought the hitaite up to her bared forehead and tenderly, she tied it about her head, listening to the rustle of the folds. The feel of the headband left a sensation on her fingertips of fairytale times. She inhaled the disintegrating dust, hoping it would linger.

For a moment, she stared into the mirror and did not speak.

Quietly, she slipped out the door.

-

She stepped through to the clearing and already knew he was there.

He stood with his back faced to her and would not acknowledge her presence. She smiled, understanding.

She stood looking at his back, and he stood, not looking at her. She was at ease and he was a rubber band pulled tight, struggling not to snap. (But of course the rubber band cannot determine its own elasticity, she reasoned.)

She waited for the appropriate time, and when the wind smelled right, she spoke.

"Don't," she called, softly. He nearly jumped but restrained himself, the years of discipline at practice. She saw his fingers tighten, the bone-marrow harden.

He turned interminably slow; the lines of his body unforgivably straight. (But trembling at the edges, she noted.) He turned and looked at her, the hardest white of eyes. She thought of ostrich eggs, they were so hard and white.

He did not speak, but she saw the words burning in his throat, smothered and swelling.

"Hyuuga Neji," she said lightly, wind-banter.

He did not reply.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" she asked him.

He nodded, the veins in his neck stretched so taut—she felt they would explode at any moment and the blood they would bleed out onto the ground would smell of white and nothing, mixed with the glossy hue of distilled hatred.

"The clouds are nice," she said, looking at the cumulus colored like dirty sheep.

He nodded again without looking up.

"The snow is coming," she observed. "You can feel it."

He stood his ground.

"You like snow?"

Involuntarily, he thought of snow and of his pale snow-drop cousin, of clipped white falcon wings, frosted trees, and frozen coy ponds.

"Yes," he said, barely above a whisper. And then, a little too hoarsely to be the Neji, the dear prodigy of a Hyuuga, _Neji_:

"What do you want?"

She paused and considered his question, cocking her head conversationally.

"What do I want?" she repeated, softly. The wind played with the words from her lips, twisted them into something—something he could not tell and did not like because of it.

She didn't answer right away, just to play him, pluck his strings; half-careless, half-tenderly. "I want a lot of things," she said.

She thought for a while, listing them aloud. "Blueberries. Milk. Summer vacation. My bedroom walls painted. To learn how to weave underwater. For the roses in my backyard to bloom, and for the aphids to stop eating them. A birthday party."

His throat tightened with every irrelevant word and she felt the anger curdling. She played a dangerous game, but she _knew_ how to play it. She threw the fancies in his face and loved to watch him squirm beneath the tickle, because she knew she would always win.

Suddenly Neji had grasped her by the arms and pushed her roughly against the nearest tree. The bark scratched her back, but if felt almost good (she deserved it, didn't she?). He looked at her with his fiercely beautiful ostrich-egg eyes and clamped his hands tight, tighter around her wrists. She felt her pulse throbbing peacefully. He squeezed as if he could squeeze out his anger into her and let her feel its insane grip.

"What do you want?" he whispered jaggedly. His words and breath tore hot against her face, but maybe only because the air was cold. There was a tinge of rosy smile on her cheeks as she regarded him, coolly.

"I already told you, Neji-kun," she spoke, and she wove her words like honey.

"Don't play with me, Haruno," he snapped, low and dangerous. His eyes were white, so white, and his grip was hard. She felt the heat from his body wafting towards her, warming her faintly.

She let her head roll to one side and allowed the crease of a dimple.

"I want you to be happy, Neji-kun," she said, calm and sounding dangerously sincere.

Neji tightened his hold around her wrists, crushing. She nearly winced with the pain, but bore it. He noticed this and cursing, abruptly let go, flinging her hands away. His own hands fell limp to his sides.

He turned away to the trees and they shriveled, iced, beneath his gaze. A furious tingle danced on her wrists where his fingerprints remained, white and livid.

"Neji," she called, feeling her wrists come faintly to.

"Leave," he said, closing his eyes.

"Neji," she said.

"Get away from me," he repeated, growling.

"Neji," she said, "stop running away."

"Shut up," he said.

"Neji," she continued, "it's killed you, and you keep pretending you're alive. You're a corpse, Neji, and you smell. Can't you smell your own rot?"

"Shut up," he said, raising his voice.

"Neji," she pushed on, "what you're doing is not only unreasonable, it is cowardly and everything I would expect from a man who knows nothing about _being _a man. If you keep pushing it away it'll only stick harder. I'm after you, Neji, and I won't let go. I'm not going to let you run away and become like—"

"Shut up!" he shouted.

"Like Sasuke," she countered calmly. There was a pause, and then Neji spoke.

"I am not Sasuke," Neji said, measured, trembling steel. His hands quivered. "I am not Sasuke, nor am I Naruto, nor am I Kakashi. I am not Lee. I am not a man you can come and shape as you please, 'save' out of pity, or simply because you have nothing better to do with your time. I do not need saving, and I do not _want _saving. I don't need you."

Sakura stepped over to Neji and touched him lightly on the back, and the touch turned his back immediately cold.

"Neji," she whispered dangerously, in his ear. "I love you. You can't escape love."

Neji felt a shiver running up his spine and hated himself for it. "Didn't you love Sasuke?" he spat.

She let out a little laugh that rolled up and up in odd cadences. It caressed his ear, strange and frightening, but undeniably beautiful. He controlled the shiver again. He felt sick in his stomach. "No," she said slowly, as if daring him to savor each word. "I didn't love him."

"Then what was he to you?" he said, harshly. "The tears you spilled for him were legendary, Haruno." He let a smirk creep into his words, the hard-chock sarcasm that was his best weapon.

She laughed the chilling laugh again, tilting her head back. The laugh echoed and dissipated into mist.

"Neji-kun, you're awfully funny," she said, smiling. He hated her disarming calm, her guileless charm, and could not remember when Haruno Sakura had become _this_.

She twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

"But you know, Neji-kun," she said, still smiling sweetly, "you're also very wrong."

Neji's lips thinned into silence. "Am I?" he said, each word hard and crystalline.

"Yes, Neji," she said. "You know nothing of love. You know nothing of power. You know nothing of yourself, of your fate, of who you are. You say you are a caged bird, but what do you know? You know nothing."

She said this not in a spiteful way, but in a matter-of-fact way that could not be disputed, and therefore was all the worse.

"You don't know me," she said, and she was right.

She kissed him on the lips, then, frostily.

His breath was hot and cold with shock as her lips left his and she watched his expression, almost gleefully. He stared and could not keep the confusion from muddying his eyes. She saw him so clearly, and it scared him, angered him.

"What—why did you do that?" he bit out, stonily, the lines of his face etched hard. He did not look into her eyes but rather past them. _(he was afraid!)_

She giggled. "I told you, Neji-kun. I love you."

-

The things I write these days make no sense. Come to me, plot! Sakura's a bit creepy in this one. Working on dialogue.


	13. Three

The three of them are a body. They feel together, they grow together, they hurt together. They are connected, and when one of them feels something, the others sense it too. They know each other's capabilities.

If one were to ask Sasuke if Naruto would become Hokage some day, Sasuke would say, "He's an idiot."

If one were to ask Naruto if Sasuke was better than him, Naruto would say, "Of course not, are you stupid?"

And if one were to ask Sakura which of the two she loved better, she would say, "Sasuke."

But each one of them knows what the other really means.

Each one of them tries to break out of the mold sometimes. It's like the workings of Siamese triplets; you love the other half (in this case, third) of you as much as you despise them. But it's mutual, so it's harmless. Most of the time, at least.

Sometimes they grow tired of being understood. Sometimes they want to be _mis_understood. Sometimes they stretch the boundaries; but the boundaries are unbreakable and soon enough they will come vaulting back into the other two's embrace. They know where home is even if there are walls that separate them.

Kakashi is like the grandfather. He has grey hair and the grandfather smile to match, even though it isn't always so sure of itself. The three of them trust him more than they trust themselves, though they will not admit it. He is a deep weakness for each of them, and they are his, too. They hold onto these weaknesses for each other, hold it in tentative smiles, and smirks.

They are vulnerable for one another.

The wild side shows through each of them, on certain wild nights. These nights are dark and inky, but the moon is always bright, so each can see through enlightened eyes. They take turns being crazy, because if they were all crazy all at once, the result would be disastrous. They understand that there is a time for each one of them. They wait turns, but when it is their turn, they hold nothing back.

Sasuke's wild night was a long one that lasted three years. He went away and for a while the candle was snuffed out, and they heard coyote yips in the distance and far-off screaming. Then one quiet night the candle was relit and Sasuke came back to them, fantastically repentant.

Naruto's wild nights are frequent but short-lived. He is not wild in the times when the Kyuubi is unleashed, but rather in the moments after it has collapsed within him. Naruto finds it hard to hold himself together, and that is why he is always sort of wild, with that fierce grin in his eyes.

Sakura's wild nights are rare but more frightening than either of the others. When she lets loose, she lets loose a cry and it echoes for miles, lighting the torch of each Hidden Village, a great bloody beacon. She lets loose like an angry spirit, and her thirst for revenge seems deeper than Sasuke's, then, in all her blood-curdling looks and crazed charm. But it's the calm smile she keeps for the wildest nights of all.

Usually Sakura is the one who touches the other two back from their wild nights to tired day. But when Sakura is wild, the only one who can keep her from the worst is Kakashi. One of her wild nights occurred when Kakashi was gone on a mission, and for a long while, Sakura was an animal roaming the streets in beautiful woman form. When Kakashi returned, she snarled at him with her foreign looks and her drunkenness of the wild night. She smiled the calm smile. He held her by the shoulders and looked straight into her eyes and with his red eye, wise and ruby, told her to go to sleep. To wake up the next morning. And that was exactly what she did.

She didn't have a wild night for a long time after that.

-

The three of them know the meaning of love without comprehending it. They carry out the acts of it without good intentions. They are not sure if they love one another.

They do.

* * *

Team three speculation. I feel the need to write something different...but I don't know what. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 


	14. Lotus

They live on the strings of night sky, on forsaken rooftops. She tiptoes across the grooved tiles to his hardened, diamond-crusted side, her fingertips just brushing his—

His flinch is just beginning. He looks sideways to her, and his eyes are so blue, black, deep, indigo…

She looks through them in awe, at their colored telescopes of emptiness. She wonders how he can stand the miracle of his own being, and then remembers his suffering.

"Sasuke," she breathes into the shell of his ear, and she senses his shivering in compliment of the night air. He surveys the craters of the moon, the body of milked and drowned seas.

She sits beside him, delicately folding her knees into her chest (a lotus dying in itself).

He grows tense but cloaks it with his shadowed glare, his sour expression that is like black coffee.

They do not speak to one another, because the night is too silent. Instead, they think of special someones who have forgotten, of living in another time. The night is a pearly reconnaissance of the future, distilled and re-stilled to fit their broken mind-frames.

She thinks too hard and speaks, before her mind explodes with the longing and rehashed images.

"Did you—ever—remember?"

She bites her lip and hates herself for clouding the night; but she cannot help herself. Her lashes quiver like lilies.

He angles his head to the sky, away from her churning, buttermilk expressions.

"That time," she says quickly. "That time, when…"

She stumbles among the flittering syllables, and the clouds momentarily cover the moon.

"When we…"

She stops stumbling, and her feet begin to bleed with the shards of sentence fragments. Her expression is pained, but he is still looking away. She shakes her head and recognizes this field of loss (her footprints are still embedded in the earth).

"…never mind."

She draws her knees closer to her body for warmth and dies again, so that the moon can be reborn.

The clouds move away and the moon lights his pale, tight-lipped face.

She lets out a quiet sigh.

His back is turned as she drowns within herself.

* * *

Sasusaku. Missing the old times. 


	15. Blue

The sky is falling, but neither of them cares.

They sit on the blue bench and the wind whips their hair back in long, graceful scythes. He is a marble statue, and she is the sculptor who sits quietly beside the simmering cold of her creation. The garden winds in paths of ice, and these two decorate it with their furious shades of white.

She breaks the silence because her chisel is too sharp, and she needs to know the truth.

"Neji-niisan?" she ventures; her voice a slice of wind.

He turns and shifts to face her, his gaze of opal hardness and milky clarity. For a moment she is startled by how cool and how white the eyes are (she forgets he is alive, sometimes).

"Hinata-sama," he acknowledges.

She hesitates, and then her words break through the watery trembling, the surface of thin, egg-shell ice.

"Do you…do you know why the birds fly south for the winter?"

He stares at her curiously. "Hinata-sama?"

She bows her head, and the bobbing of her head is beguilingly graceful. "Why…why do the birds fly south for the winter, Neji-niisan?"

He can sense that there is a deeper question beneath the snow-drop guise, but he cannot decipher her cryptic stance. She twiddles her thumbs a little, treading her feet in the slushy snow. He chooses his words carefully.

"Because it's too cold for the birds in the winter; so they migrate south to the tropics, where it is warm year-round," he says, unsure of his answer even though he _knows _it is true for a fact. It's funny how easily she spreads this flattering disease of uncertainty.

She gives no reply. He is suddenly nervous, even though she is a gentle judge. She forgives so easily, and yet—

He is afraid of her disappointment that is so heavy and meek-scented.

"I…I see," she says, finally, her head still bowed and her bangs shadowed with blue.

She lifts her gaze slowly to meet his, and her open look makes him uneasy. Her cheeks are too white and her eyes too soft, and she is too beautiful in this frosty light. He forces himself not to look away.

And then she turns her head, breaking the spell, and he is flooded with writhing self-disgust.

"I…I think we'd better go inside now. It's…getting late," she says, her voice strangely superior to the whisper.

He stands automatically, and offers her a hand. She takes it, and her touch is numbing as her slender fingers grasp his. They tramp back through the garden paths, the rose leaves whispering in regress.

He imagines he hears bird song fading in the distance.

* * *

Junk and more junk. I feel so cliche. :x


	16. Desert

A line of pain tingles along her scalp where he yanks her hair; dangerously close. She winces, caught up in the fairytale pricking and the tumbling darkness.

He hisses deeply in her ear, and she starts at the sound, her shoulders tensing automatically. The sweat dribbles down her palm, a brook of sour syrup.

She screws her eyes shut when he presses his dry lips against her neck, the clamping bite over the pale junction that barely holds together. She tries to think of pleasant things; like the sun, and butterflies, and flowers, but the images are streaked with sweat and blood and his sandy expression.

He pulls her closer to him, and his arms are surprisingly lanky; and they wind, and they wind, and they wind down aimless roads around her. The shudder is irrepressible and it possesses her; and the midnight thoughts possess her, so sick with nostalgia she could puke. (why can't she forget?)

"Stop thinking about him," he says sharply, and the suddenness of the words cuts away at her, at a piece of her that is his, after all. She writhes in his grasp but cannot break free from his stolid hands (maybe she doesn't want to).

She swallows hard and there is a violent bucking inside of her stomach, and the snapping of his lips still at her neck, always there. She can't forget.

She gasps when he brings the reddened snapping to her lips, and he swallows the high, burnished gasp and any of the words that might have come after in one gulp. She is pale and dappled with his darkness (nearly transparent) and still she cannot forget.

The motion is there, and the moon set in indigo, but will the sun rise tomorrow, she wonders.

He growls angrily, a jackal and a monster, and maybe somewhere trapped in the monster's shadow, a boy.

"I told you to stop thinking about him," he says, rumbling, and she can imagine the sharpened furrow of his gaze that is his third nature. She trembles and says nothing, because she is still pondering ghostly departures and hollow thank-yous, and cannot stop this collision course.

He brings his hand up to her face (she feels the gritting grains of sand caught in between the ageless fingernails) and forces her into his gaze, his fingers bruising her chin. She allows herself to plummet.

Two greens meet and one is sharp and deadly, and the other sickly and forgettable.

She swallows hard.

"Tell me you love me," he says. He is amazingly flat, and the plains of his words are never-ending in all directions. She finds herself lost in desert dunes and dusk-desperate horizons; she stumbles between the swelling undulations that bloom blisters on her toes.

He crushes her jaw with his thumb and forefinger, and her lips force open to eject a single syllable:

"I—"

Her jaw throbs and she plunges herself into his relentless gaze, white knuckles, cracked lips, trying to forget—

He presses harder, squeezing. "I love you," she blurts suddenly, spitting out the words like stale seasoning.

The pressure does not decrease, and her jaw throbs painfully, caught between his suspicion and his desire. And then he crushes her face to his lips, and she cries out in the roughness and the numb pungency, and the frustration of _still remembering_.

_I love you_, she screams, and he sucks up her words.

For a moment, she forgets.

-

Weirdness. I'd felt like paying a visit to the old Gaasaku realm. Yeah.


	17. Our Ending

He never loved her, and both of them knew it.

Eventually, they ended up getting married, and having two children: a boy and a girl, the perfect set. They even adopted a calico cat, to complete the picture. The boy looked like the father, dark and stunning. The girl was the mirror-image of her rosy-haired, spring-eyed mother. They were destined to fail from the start.

They were beautiful children, and the village set them apart, in secret jealousy. The parents knew with heavy hearts that the fates could not be changed, and maybe the sharp-eyed Hyuuga had been right in all his long-winded rambling.

They watched, and the boy matured in much the same way his father did. Girls fell after him, one after another, into deep ditches where they broke their heads and hearts all at once. He paid no heed and inherited his father's stolid gaze, the dark and endless magnet. (but there was nothing to avenge this time, was there?)

The girl gained much flattery and attention from the boys early on, unlike her mother. Ironically, her big forehead was her biggest asset, even though she lacked the brains her mother had once had. When she was fifteen, she spoke something of being misunderstood and hiked up her skirts to run away with some immature boy to some enchanted horizon.

Her mother didn't cry, because that was what she had wanted herself all along (still wanted?). Her father never said a word.

The boy was twenty and the calico cat dead.

Naruto came to visit every once in a while, and he was always happy and robust. During his visits, they were constantly reminded of their own vapidity and the deadness of words. They smiled kindly, though, because both had sculpted perfect masks, and secretly, they admired one another for the tireless act.

Naruto went off to live happily ever after.

The boy finally settled at twenty-five for a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, and after he married the parents never saw much of him. Certainly, he was busy weaving his own fairy-tale endings.

They understood completely.

-

_From the beginning, he had brought her pain, and she had given him her everything. And the funny thing was, she loved him for it. Somehow, giving herself to him had brought her a fulfillment neither could comprehend. Maybe she was never meant for greater things, and he had lived at her level all along. (he was too full of conceit to admit it)_

_Perhaps they completed one another, in a twisted sort of way, though the parts were ill-played. The ending was not neat or prettily packaged, but it sufficed—and that was the way they lived. Just barely above death, just barely above existing._

_It was enough for them._

_-_

Sasusaku, mostly.


	18. Collapsed

There should have only been two to begin with. Only now, they realize their deadly excess.

He speaks, his blond hair bursting.

"Hey—" he breaks in through the shivering rain. Even the points of his leaping star are uncomfortable in this three-shadowed oblivion.

The pale girl starts, her trembling greens and her bruised lips pressed tight.

"What—" says the blond boy, swallowing hard as the rain drips in between his eyes. "What's going on?"

The shadowed boy blinks, carefully measuring out the differences between them. He speaks.

"Nothing that concerns you."

Both the girl and the boy are startled by the way his voice runs like the rain down their backs, chilling. She shivers and presses instinctively against the dripping shadows of his body, and he drapes his arm around her, possessively.

The blonde boy's brow furrows between the awkward distances, too far to leap, and this collapsed promise that no longer exists

"I thought—" He frowns, his confusion clearly reflected in his eyes. He looks to the pale girl for answers. She avoids his imploring gaze, looking instead to the hissing snake-rain dancing on the streets, where guilt is rendered meaningless in elaborate twists. The orange boy tightens his fists.

"Sakura-chan—"

She flinches, and her flinch stings him, clouds his eyes.

"I—you still love him?" he says, and his words are blunt as his smoldering look, his sun-burned face. She trembles beneath his gaze, lips breaking apart. The shadowed boy does not speak.

"You still—_love_ him?" he repeats, licking his lips, never moving his eyes from her face. She shudders in the pattern of leaves, peppered with fever and frightful delirium.

"Naru—"

"How?" he asks. "After—"

She swallows hard, and frantically buries the resurfacing memories. The arm around her shoulder draws her closer, into dark and complete warmth, and she tells herself that this is a _promise_, he will keep his word, he can't break it again—can't, can he?

Wide-eyed, she kills the idiotic question, and Naruto speaks.

"I thought that—" he swallows hard, still trying to comprehend. "You—"

He chokes as if he is half-resigned, and maybe he is, she thinks with some relief. But the relief is short-lived as the spark flickers again in the blonde's eyes. _Please don't let him ask again, please don't let him—_

"Sakura-chan," he pleads. "You—you _promised_ me."

His whisper is painful and thick, reminding her of her skillful dishonesty. _But it was for the sake of love,_ she protests, hating herself for these flimsy excuses. _Love, love—surely he would understand? _

"Naruto," she whimpers, while the shadowed-boy glares indeterminably, never wavering.

Naruto watches her dolefully, and the look stings her gut. Her mind is numb with meaningless apologies, and she counts them off, trying to determine which would be the most appeasing. None of them will work, she knows, but it's worth a try, isn't it? For _love_?

She knows all at once that she can never mend the bridge between the three of them, because it was never there to begin with. They had all fantasized about crossing to higher mountain peaks, but the trail was broken, and so was their patience. (along with two hearts)

There was nothing to wait for.

She speaks, swallowing the lump of roiling heat, pressing herself against cool shadow for uncertain reassurance.

"I'm sorry, Naruto," she whispers, awkwardly clear in this pouring rain, silent and amused. It falls like whiplashes from the sky; but the strikes are gentle, and that makes it all the worse. "I really am."

He looks and the change in his eyes is jerking, too sudden to be natural; the hue is unsettled, like the bottom of a river. His gaze turns hard (but still vulnerable), and she falls away from the gaze, shamefully.

And then she finds herself stumbling down the muddy road (nearly clawing), legs all winding and too long, they were never meant for her; and she is trying to get away, get away from the gaze that reaches, violates, and very nearly touches—

Gasping and halfway away, she realizes there is nothing to look forward to. There is no destination for her, but only a home to abandon and accuse.

The shadow boy is left behind, and he was all but vapor on her lips.

-

I'm not really sure about this one. Sort of a SasuSakuNaru triangle? It just sort of happened.


	19. Happy

They lay out in the grassy field and the stars shoot over their heads. She looks up to the sky with her neck leaned way back, propped up on her arms. The stars ripple in her eyes; a silk of childhood fascination.

He looks at the stars too, but out of the corner of his eyes he watches her.

A smile clings in the air. He cannot grab it, because it will burn his lips.

It softens her cheeks and the angle of her chin.

"Neji-niisan," she whispers, entranced by the sky. The paint will never run out; the color will not fade. It's a pretty thought.

"Hm," he replies.

She cocks her head back and lets the indigo swirl with the purples; and maybe dreams can mix with reality, she thinks.

He watches her and somehow he knows what she is thinking, because he's thought those very same thoughts before, himself. The expression saddens him, but he forces himself to discard the emotion.

She sighs, and her lips curve up into a canoe-smile.

"Nothing," she says. He reaches for the smile (the temptation is too great) and lets it seize his lips, crackling.

This is as happy as it gets.

* * *

Actually written a while ago...just decided to post it. The Hyuugas are so tragic, and that's why I love them. 


	20. Railing

"Kakashi," she breathes heavily, into simmering night.

She claws towards him in the darkness. "Kakashi—"

He touches her on the shoulder, gently, and she shivers in violent response. His touch never fails to fascinate her.

"Were you—" she begins, struggling against the hot brand glowing in her throat, tipped with stifled recollection. Does she really want to ask?

He breathes lightly onto her neck, and the breath is steady and even, cool and untouched. It makes her dizzy. She wants to change the pace of it, change _him _so badly. She can't understand this sudden and groundless urge, only knows that it is overpowering.

"Yes?" he murmurs encouragingly. They are sitting side by side on a forsaken balcony, where chimeras live and they can spin their fantasies in peace (with no one to remind them of the end of every road). They have come to talk of things that are unmentionable by daylight; things that would be too painful, then. Night makes these things vivid and unreal.

"Were you ever—" she swallows, closing her eyes against his hot and tempered touch, the mild controversy of his look. She forces out the last part before she can change her mind. "In love?"

She feels his surprise in the stiff silence that follows. She berates herself silently for creating this awkwardness, but knows it is necessary. She needs to know the answer, to rid herself of the burning lump in her throat and this coarse longing that never seems to go away.

"Sakura," he says, softly. There is a bit of pain in there, she can tell. He's stopped trying to hide things like that from her—or is it simply that she notices them now? She can't tell. "What do you think?"

She swallows. She knows what she thinks; she knows that he probably does, too.

"I don't know," she says instead, because she's always been a coward, and this is the easy way out.

Kakashi laughs a little. It's a beautiful laugh, in its strained sincerity. She shivers again.

"You do, Sakura," he says, and she senses the cryptic smile forming, flawlessly cynical. It tickles the back of her neck, causing the inching caterpillar hairs to rise. "You do. You're just afraid to admit it."

She trembles. How does he know her so well?

"Don't be afraid to be honest, Sakura." His head bows, and the shadows are kind to his masked face—always have been. He is beautiful.

"A shinobi does not love," Sakura whispers. The words are very dangerous (nearly suicidal). "A shinobi does not become too attached, lest the tool lose its sharpness."

She inhales deeply to ease the fluttering in her stomach, to quench this bittersweet giddiness. The night air pierces deep and full, to the darkest parts she is afraid to acknowledge. "Kakashi," she says, again. "Have you ever wanted to, then?"

His silhouette is the merest glimpse of shadow that speaks of the unattainable. She wants to rip the mask off his face, to let him feel this cool night air, to let him _breathe_, for once. To see his face. (but exposure is painful—)

He leans back against the railing, the moonlight gleaming on strands of silver, setting them ablaze. The fire burns her eyes, frozen magma. "Of course."

She is taken aback by his simple answer. She hadn't expected it of him. But she supposed that was what made him so compelling in the first place.

"Then—?" she asks, just because she can.

"Wanting doesn't mean it happens, Sakura," he says. She bows her head, feeling the shame skirt her cheeks; she'd learned the lesson long ago. How could she forget?

"But then again, just because it doesn't happen—doesn't mean you stop wanting."

This part surprises her more than the last. Had he intended it for her? She shakes her head ruefully.

"I know," she says, her gaze drawn down to her tingling fingertips.

She spies him out of the corner of her eye. He is old and young, magnificent in the moonlight. It is his element. The question bursts from this strange inspiration.

"Why?" she asks. "Why do you wear a mask?"

This is taboo, she knows, but she cannot resist. If things are to break, at least she will _know, _even as the pieces shatter out of place.

He looks to her, searching, and the tilt of his head and the depth of his eyes are wary, are opaque, are nearly—

Afraid?

She shakes her head. _No. Kakashi would never—_

"Because…I choose to," he says, the measure of his words painful and unfittingly awkward. Like he hasn't been asked this question in too long a time; like he's forgotten the answer. "I need no other reason than that."

She lets out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding. He is trying to kill the question from the start. She doesn't want it to die, yet; she wants to keep it alive with a desperation that confounds her. This is a part of him she has never seen; there is something of her that is driven to discover more of this shaken land.

"But why…do you choose to?" she asks. She is afraid that she may be pushing it too far. More importantly, she is afraid that he will shut her out, cut her off. He very nearly does. But there is a faint flicker of him, an unexpected tenderness (or is it vulnerability?) that gives her hope; that keeps the door from shutting on pale nights like these.

He does not answer for a very long time. She is sitting on the edge of the railing, knowing that one push (or maybe just sitting here long enough) could send both of them tumbling off the edge. She wonders what lies at the bottom of the pit; shakes away the thought because it could be potentially frightening.

"I…" he says, and the way his voice strikes the air is just so _beautiful_, she can't understand how he _does_ it. It aches and is impeccably lonely. She'd play it over and over in her mind if she could understand it; but the timbre continues, misled. "…must."

The four letters are packed with so much pain, it staggers her. (she doesn't notice his flat-out contradiction) She tightens her grip on the railing just to make sure they really aren't falling away. The feeling of her knuckles blanched white is vaguely reassuring in the midst of a vanishing sky. Just the two of them and this iron-wrought railing are left.

She risks a glance at him, the sparest sharing. His look makes her weak in the stomach, brings a tremble to her knees.

She wants to hold him.

This revelation is shocking, because it makes her realize that's what she wanted _all along_. She's always wanted to hold him, to be close to him (not this detached pupil who is occasionally intriguing, not this pink-haired girl held at odd ends).

Propriety and common sense tell her to look away before it's too late. _But,_ she argues, _isn't it already too late? _

This urge to hold him makes her want to explode; it clenches her stomach in roils and roils of heartache and incurable disease.

The yearning is there, but the reality is beyond it. She can't bring herself to hold him. It is forbidden; it is the line she cannot—will not—cross. Things would fall apart, and the blame would stain her hands. She swallows the lump in her throat (but it always resurfaces!).

"Ka…kashi…" she whispers hoarsely, and the way she says it brings a shiver up both their spines.

She begins to cry now. It doesn't much surprise either of them; but that doesn't make the act any less chilling. The tears streaming down her face are streaked with familiarity, because this is the only thing she remembers how to do—the only thing he remembers her ever doing, really. This is the only thing she could ever do right.

He hesitates a moment before drawing closer to her. He lightly enfolds her (she feels the awkward obligation, curses it); and that makes the cries that rack her body harder. _I don't want this, don't—do—can't have—_

"What would…" she manages between soft hiccups and painfully perfected sniffles, "what would you do if…if…I told you I loved you?"

She feels his arms stiffening like crystallized structures with the life drained out; hates this fateful and lonely pause. Either he doesn't know the answer, or he can't bring himself to say the truth. (both are horrid thoughts)

"Sakura…" he whispers, ice-cast arms around her (_please don't melt away,_ she begs). "You…wouldn't."

But it's more of a pleading than a declaration, as hard as he tries to disguise it as the latter.

She cries harder and harder, and she feels the dripping hesitance of his arms, the painful fluttering. His words hurt more than she had anticipated. She thought this was a thing only Sasuke could do to her. (she doesn't understand that she does this to herself)

"But…!" she cries, and the flow stems from something deep and unaccountable. The depth strikes him for the briefest moment, then withdraws. _But I do, I do! _and she screams herself silently hoarse.

(does she really?)

_Why doesn't he under_stand?

And the feel of his arms melting around her is suddenly disgusting beyond measure. She wants to shriek and throw herself away, wants to clench and rip the mask off, scream at him for causing this embroilment, for birthing all these useless nights that mean so much to her. She wants so much to hate him. Instead she shivers and whimpers and does nothing to push him away.

There is a fresh burst of tears and she is a deadly frenzy of pink hair and desolation.

"Sakura," Kakashi says, quietly. "Don't—do this."

His words tighten her throat and revive the lump in full vigor. She clenches her hands, and there is so much emotion balled up in there that she could kill someone and not think about it later. There is so much turmoil banging in her head and heart that she thinks she could forgive herself.

"I'm sorry," she says, flatly.

His arms are dead around her; she can hardly hear his heart pumping.

She shuts her eyes and grinds her teeth. Calmly, she removes herself from his detached gaze, and stands. She will never be anything more. She stands and ignores that the earth is shaking beneath her feet; that the moon is much too large on the horizon (it will knock off the axis!) and the silver fire still burns her eyes. (_Don't look—)_

The moonlight pulses on the rooftops as she walks away.

She still wants to hold him.

-

In the mood for KakaSaku. It's been a while.


	21. Time Machine

When Shikamaru learns that Ino is dead, he is cloud-watching. The person who informs him is a nervous man with a perpetual stutter that Shikamaru finds incredibly annoying. He puts up with the man until he hears the news, and then he forgets the man is there at all.

When Shikamaru learns that Ino is dead, he says nothing at first. Then the man whom he momentarily forgot existed asks him if he's alright, and he hears himself saying yes, and thank you.

After a while, the man goes away.

Shikamaru looks up and notices suddenly that the sky has darkened and the clouds are forming into roils of black and grey. He thinks this is odd, because only a moment ago, they'd been white and friendly.

But then again, a moment ago Ino hadn't been dead.

-

Shikamaru goes first to visit Chouji. He knocks on the door of Chouji's house, and his large father comes to answer. He is not smiling, and Shikamaru finds the incongruous expression awfully amusing.

"Is Chouji home?" Shikamaru hears himself asking. Chouji's father's response is a rumble of thunder.

"Yes...I think he'll be glad to see you," says the large father, moving aside his bulk to make room for the shadow user. Shikamaru nods and enters the house. He walks quietly down the empty hallways to Chouji's room. The door is closed, but not locked.

Shikamaru pushes it opens. It creaks quietly.

Chouji is sitting on the bed with a bag of chips; but he isn't eating. Shikamaru takes a moment to capture this image of Chouji on the bed, with an uneaten bag of chips hugged to his chest. It is so tragic, it's funny.

"Chouji," he says. His voice is much too loud and it ruins the stillness of the moment, ripping the frame. Chouji looks up at his voice, and the rustle of his figure and the length of his stare are forlorn. They remind Shikamaru of a European dog he'd seen once; a Basset hound, if he remembers correctly. The whole comparison is laughable. He shouldn't be comparing his best friend to a droopy European dog, but death makes things loopy and nonsensical.

Chouji says nothing but _stares_ at him, like he's a savior or something. Like he's expecting Shikamaru to come in and stop the world from crashing down on their heads; like he can make the InoShikaChou complete again. The hopeful look hurts more than if Chouji were to scream and rail at him, or beat him senseless like Shikamaru knows he can. But he also knows that Chouji would never do such a thing.

That's one thing he hates about his best friend.

Shikamaru and Chouji sit side by side on the bed for a long while. It is only after three hours pass that Chouji finally opens the bag of chips and begins to eat.

-

Shikamaru remembers the first time he'd met his teammates. He hadn't been particularly thrilled when he was assigned to them. He knew the three of them didn't fit; they were awkward and uncoordinated and hadn't the slightest notion of teamwork.

Ino was too loud and too blonde, and that was the first thing Shikamaru noticed. But he also noticed that she wasn't ugly, and that she could be nice if she really tried.

Chouji was alright, because he didn't do much besides eat. Shikamaru didn't mind him.

Shikamaru knew from the start that none of them would ever amount to anything great. It was a gut feeling; a kind of wisdom—or was it instinct?—that told him so. Not that he minded, because life wasn't very exciting, anyways. He was content to settle for a second-rate fate.

But there were the surprises.

There were, from time to time, the seamless moments. There were times when they knew each other so well that they didn't even realize it. There were times when Ino stood up for her boys even though she _insisted_ she really didn't care for them, or when Chouji became something neither Ino nor Shikamaru could fathom because he was so beautiful. Shikamaru came to understand that _they_ understood things, too—only, Ino wouldn't stand to accept the circumstances, and Chouji was too wise to even try.

They became the InoShikaChou after seven months of knowing each other. Asuma had become frustrated with the trio and was on the verge of giving up. Instead, he surprised them all and signed them up for the Chuuin exam. Shikamaru thought he did it only because he knew the three of them couldn't pass; after all, Asuma had a wretched sense of humor to match the smell of his cigarette smoke.

None of them thought they could do it (though Ino did pretend she was confident). They'd grown, yes, but they hadn't excelled. There was a stark difference.

It was in the Forest of Death that Shikamaru discovered Ino's weakness. It wasn't the feigned kind of weakness she used to charm boys, but a weakness that she hid because she knew it could be dangerous. In Shikamaru's opinion, Ino's vulnerability made her prettier. He'd never tell her, though.

It was in the Forest of Death that Shikamaru also discovered Chouji's strength. It was when the three of them pulled together that Chouji become remarkably strong, remarkably gifted. When he wasn't thinking about Korean barbecue or complaining about the lack of food, Chouji was one of the most inspiring people that Shikamaru knew.

It was in the Forest of Death that Shikamaru discovered his own genius. He'd always known that he was smart. But in the Forest of Death, Shikamaru became smart enough to know there were limits to his genius. That made him sharper than ever.

And so they didn't die in the Forest of Death.

Perhaps Asuma hadn't recommended them merely to satisfy his own sadism. Perhaps he'd known all along it would bind them, tightly, irreversibly; and maybe he was actually a good teacher.

Shikamaru was smart enough not to question reality. He knew the answers would never satisfy.

-

Shikamaru knows he's becoming more cynical as time passes. He knows this because he thinks too much, now—he thinks about ironic things and gets a good mental laugh out of them. He thinks he enjoys being cynical more than cloud-watching, these days. There's no one to tell him that he's wrong.

He thinks cynically as he sits on the bed beside Chouji, who's eating his bag of potato chips. Shikamaru imagines what life would be like if the InoShikaChou had never existed. He believes they all would have been happier. One day, he thinks, if he becomes motivated enough, he'll invent a time machine and erase the InoShikaChou. All the useless tragedy.

He sighs. Chouji munches.

_All those seamless moments._

Shikamaru is stirred from his cynism when Chouji grunts gently. He's holding out something. A potato chip.

Shikamaru looks to the bag clutched to Chouji's chest. It's empty and crinkled. He looks back to Chouji, whose hand is still suspended with the small crisp, and realization dawns. The last chip.

Shikamaru can't say anything. There's a strange lump in his throat that prevents any words from coming out or any cynical thoughts from popping up. For that, he's grateful for the lump.

Shikamaru hesitates. The last chip is the strongest symbol between them. He isn't sure if he should accept or not. But then he looks back to Chouji, and Chouji has on the most somber expression. In this light, he is the beautiful thing that neither Ino nor Shikamaru could fathom. Shikamaru knows that Chouji only looks like that when he's utterly serious about something.

So Shikamaru accepts. He takes the chip and sticks it in his mouth, chews slowly. It's over-salted, maybe a little stale. But it's good. Shikamaru swallows and the blessed lump disappears along with it. But still, there are no cynical thoughts to fill this moment.

Chouji turns away and reaches for another bag.

Shikamaru thinks that a time machine was a dumb idea, after all. Probably the dumbest idea he'd ever come up with. Shikamaru thinks back to this morning, to the darkening sky and the black clouds. The weather had been stormy and the stuttering man's words confused. But one thing is clear.

He doesn't want to forget InoShikaChou.

-

I'm so in a rut. Geh. Something I wrote a while ago.


	22. The Good Fight

"Tell me," she said softly, her words cushioned with dead velvet. "Why do you fight?" Her words were molded; decayed, even. She stared at him pointedly, eyes never leaving the ghostly pallor of his face.

He said nothing. He knew she still wanted to speak, so he indulged her.

"You don't fight for honor." He crushed the flinch mercilessly. He wouldn't let her see anything past the exterior. That was the sole purpose of the mask, after all, and he would not let the fabric go to waste.

"Do you fight for Konoha? Do you love the people?" she asked, bluntly. It was almost obvious she thought he didn't. A kunai played on her fingertips, lazily.

He said nothing, but this time not to indulge her. She had used the words he hated._ Love. People. _

A tight smile was born, just to be tartly contrary.

"What do they mean to you?" she persisted, twirling the fine blade, painted black fingernails a haze. It spun quickly in the mad, polluted light. The clearing was silent, suffocated. The trees were dying slowly around the encounter.

He pondered the meaning of her question with keen intensity while feigning disinterest, bordering on boredom. He thought about the past choices he had made. He thought about loving death more than comradeship, treasuring pain above healing. Holding onto the hurt when help was in perfect reach. Savoring that he pushed away his own salvation and knew that it was _his_ choice.

He thought about this all, and would have liked to laugh.

She smiled, coyly.

"No answer?" she pursued, flicking the knife gracefully, so that it landed flat in the palm of her hand.

The knife was in her gut before she had time to repudiate. He was a flash no one saw. Blood seeped warmly from her stomach onto the blade; trickled onto the barest tips of his fingers. His grip was tight on the handle shoving the blade into her gut, and he did not look at her as she stared, disbelieving, into the junction of his chin.

"I have an answer," he said, calmly, (grinding) his gaze searching the blankness of the clearing. He withdrew the knife from her belly, and she stumbled back, gasping. Her eyes were glossed as she fell.

He threw away the bloodied blade and heard it clatter down through the trees.

He left the clearing without giving one.

* * *

If you couldn't tell, it was Kakashi. The girl was supposedly some random enemy ninja. Yeah. I'm trying to break free of this rut, so pardon if it's bad and spammy. 


	23. Persimmons and Tears

Because this isn't home: not with the streets and buildings so close together and beautifully tight, not with the people smiling their crinkled-blossom smiles at one another, not with the warmth and the smell of persimmons hung heavy; not when everything is so complete and right.

Because he doesn't belong inside of it; this isn't home.

He can look in through the windows, with the traveler's gaze (more like the traitor's, sneers the voice), but with this invisible gate he's banging against, there is no way in. There is no key for him to find, no lock to unlock. It's nonexistent here, under his trembling fingers, beside this great stone wall.

He can walk past like it means nothing at all to him, but that would be a lie. (Not that lies mean anything to him, anymore.) He can walk past with the shadows covering one eye like a patch of shame, with his head turned slightly towards the people and the smiles, but mostly away, because looking isn't a privilege he deserves. He can think to himself that his past life has been a sin, and he can even contemplate repentance, but that won't change a thing. No doors magically appear. No one steps out of the world of smiles to bring him in.

His lashes are long now, to cover the emptiness in his eyes; so he can look with secret longing at the warm dust of love and lust, and all the things in between.

Faintly, he wonders if anyone recognizes this stooped and wild figure; the fugitive, the insane genius, the boy who left and never came back. (at least not in one piece)

He hopes not.

But then there is the hope that someone out there does. That someone out there remembers him, not for what he is, but for who he was. Someone to remember the things he can't; those good things that slipped away between nights of vertigo and walls crashing down to suffocate, ringing in his ears and stinging in his eyes. Someone who has kept those attachments, someone who feels something _real_ and tangible, even if it is hate. He understands hate, now. It stems from love.

He creeps through the alleys, where the rats are sleeping now, twitching blissfully. He creeps through the alleys where he remembers his childhood and the things he threw away. He creeps through the alleys and into the light without realizing it.

And he meets her there, with the orange sun behind her back, the epitome of a perfectly scheduled appointment.

This is the best thing he can ever remember: her smile.

She stops with the bag of grocery in her arms (full of good things to eat; carrots sticking out of the top, potatoes lumping at the bottom), with the most beautiful and perplexed expression on her face that he's ever, ever seen. (and he knows he'll remember this one for good)

For a moment her mouth twitches, like her mouth feels funny with anesthesia and can't form the right shapes; is numb and shocked, and isn't quite sure what to do. And then, almost reflexively, the sound falls out, like a pebble.

"Sasuke."

She blinks, and the tops of the carrots rustle. Then the bag drops and she's falling towards him, towards him, this gravitational pull so strong.

His legs are screaming, screeching to run away, run away. But his feet are stuck in this quagmire of her embrace; it's so different, it's so new and old, and he _misses_ it so, he wonders why he ever pushed her away in the first place. Her touch is paralysis and heaven.

He can't remember ever feeling this way.

And then her tears on his cheek, running down her nose, sticking to his shirt; the way they are so hot and salty, they bring back everything that was forgotten in between those vertigo nights with the walls crashing down. She has kept those memories for him. She has.

And her sobs are shaking the walls of the buildings, shaking the world of smiles. People stop to stare and murmur, and the voices bring back memories of some ugly things; but her scent is so overwhelming that he can't think anymore, doesn't want to. He inhales deep and holds her close, and he feels that the road he's taken was the right one, maybe. And she cries them both away to place no one can remember.

This is the best thing he can never forget: her tears.

* * *

Written a little while ago. Slightly corny, but yeah, I couldn't help it.


	24. Bitter Winter

* * *

Her smile stings like vinegar unfolding on both their tongues, buried beneath smothering words unspoken. The tentative sourness is caused by the knowledge that even if they bring him back now, things won't be the same. The walls will be a prison to him, not a home. Naruto's promise has steeped into a curse.

He can't return to the past, no matter how deep the plea for his childhood goes. It might strike her heart and make her insides shake, but it can't change history, or genealogy, or the turbid fate of mankind. It bends her previous definition of comradeship and love into angles that refract light into strange and eerie frequencies. Tsunade has taught her many things, but this is something that she must learn on her own. No one can teach her what it means to grieve, except herself.

Somehow, she can't perceive him clearly in between the sheets of wavering light or the tears that have burrowed deep into her heart, not to be let out. She can't quite tell if he's really standing before her or not, or if this is another wistful figment. She's stopped crying, but he wouldn't know because he hasn't been there all these years. He wasn't there to see the pain he caused her (_too much of a coward_, she thinks), or to see her grow through the blood-red skewers still digging in.

Here, in this quiet confrontation of tunneling orange sky, she wishes with all her might that she had never met him. She wishes that this had never come to be, that the decayed love wasn't still dripping from the walls, or the memories of a Team 7 and a village called home ringing in her head.

She can't quite tell what he is, now. He's not a boy; he never was. But he's not a man, either. Kakashi is a man and Sasuke isn't like Kakashi. Naruto is even more of a man than Sasuke now, from the way his blue eyes have weathered and matured. He's caught on the brink, balancing on the edges of something sharp, never allowed to reach the goal.

He's a creature all his own, but he's become something neither of them wants him to be.

She doesn't know what to say. There's something awkward and heavy in the air, but at the same time, she feels that this was the way things were meant to be. (They were never supposed to have a happy ending; she was stupid for believing.) She feels that the years have been winding up to this terribly inadequate knot in her stomach and the strange detachment that chills her skin. Why doesn't she feel anything? Where has it all gone?

The grip on his sword loosens, and his hands hang slack by his sides, concealed by long sleeves. She watches him with a quiet gaze, and a last appeal that he does not recognize.

Was this all they ever had? Had she imagined the moments, the whispers?

They could stand like this forever, never making a move. Thinking, regretting, dreaming, hoping.

She can look at him as hard as she wants, as long as she wants, but the green of her eyes won't turn his heart back.

Somehow, spring was never enough to kill the bitter winter.

* * *

yet another forgotten piece. gahh, I seriously want to start writing a multichapter again, but I know I won't ever see it through, so...XD  



	25. Mud

He won't let her go this time.

He buries his face in her neck as he crushes her to his chest and breathes her in, through the blood and the shuddering rain and the mud that clings to his legs, sucking him in. _I'm sorry_, he wants to scream, so the whole world can hear. _I'm so sorry._

Her soft hair and her warm body, and the way she doesn't say a word, are too much for him. He wants to be closer to her, wants to somehow pull her _into _him; but they're already as close as they can get, and if he squeezes any harder, he might break a bone. Instead he just breathes fiercely, drinking in her scent of home and of all things sweet that he's been starved of for so long now.

There's a sob building up in his chest. He wishes _so _hard he could speak the words to make this right that the tears burn behind his eyes like a thousand nights of lost sleep. But he is eternally stubborn in his pride, so he'll settle for this.

"Sasuke-kun…" she whispers, choking.

Something hitches in his chest and he holds her tighter, tighter; afraid she'll disappear any moment now. God knows how many dreams (nightmares?) he's had of this moment, and the terrible emptiness he's left with when she vanishes like blue mist—and he's not even sure if this is real anymore, or if it's just another cruel imagining. It's too good to be true.

But he knows it's real because he can _feel_ her, so wonderfully tangible, pressed up against him; and every one of his senses is crying out. He knows it _has _to be real, or it wouldn't hurt so much. He could rip out his heart with his bare hands and it wouldn't hurt half as much.

She gently squeezes his arms, and then firmly removes them so she can look him straight in the eye. There are tears swimming in the bottle-green, but she holds them back with admirable poise.

He looks back at her, and thinks she's never looked so beautiful with the way the blood is streaked across her cheek and the rain and mud running down her dirty-rosy hair in murky rivulets. He can feel the tender bitterness bubbling up inside of her, the way the rainwater bubbles beside them in the mud.

But for once, even though her eyes are clear, he can't read the expression in them. His mind, incomprehensibly, draws a poetic comparison—he doesn't know why he's thinking this way, but with her, his mind has always been a little screwed. It's like looking into clouded crystal, trying to see through; and for a moment he's struck by the faintest tongue of fear. But he brushes it aside.

This is Sakura.

She looks at him quietly, and he can tell she is debating something by the way her face contorts faintly. But then her expression clears and a grim determination returns as she fixes him with a solemn green gaze.

"Sasuke…" she says quietly. It isn't the slickness of the rain against his skin that chills him inside, but the realization that she's left off the "-kun." (He doesn't realize she's left behind so much more.) That precious syllable. It isn't right without it. He _needs_ the "-kun," so he can forget every home he's abandoned, every friend he's murdered, every light he's blotted out. What ever happened?

Her head bows slightly and her wet bangs fall like a shroud over her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and he's about to ask her why _she's_ apologizing when there's a star-sharp pain shooting through his chest, and it takes him a moment to register that it's not his own heart's ache but her chakra plunged through him that's causing this incredible fire. He can feel her hand clenching around something inside of him that is still beating. He still can't believe what is happening; since when was she so strong and fast and deadly; since when could she kill like this? Since when had she _grown up_, moved past the dreams he himself never quite released? But he knows, even as he faces this lovely stranger with her hand around his heart:

This is Sakura.

Already the edges of his vision are beginning to fade into flickering black. But he struggles, fights against the coming darkness so he can catch this last glimpse of her face. Now her tears are overflowing and her poise has broken, and she has become something that he recognizes, and what's left of his heart is relieved.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun, I'm so sorry, sorry…" she sobs and sobs in a flurry of mad pink and broken romance.

He needs to speak; his mind gives its last cry, and his mouth opens. A torrent of coughing and blood comes out, and the childish expression of terror on her face reminds him of when they were twelve, in the Forest of Death…

And he remembers, now, all the moments, as they come flooding back, too late, just in time. He remembers what he's always wanted to say to her.

But his mouth isn't working, in this crucial moment. He tries to work his failing tongue even as she slips further away into darkness and every last bit of him strains to form the words, and in nothing short of a miracle, they finally break free in a hoarse caress:

"I'm sorry…Sakura."

At the words, her crying stops and she stares at him with wide green eyes still brimming with tears, and he thinks it's fitting that the last word on his tongue is her name, and the last image in his mind is her face, and the last thing touching his heart is her hand…

* * *

hmm...I'm trying to develop my style into something that's easier to work with...succeeding marginally. ;) I'd like to start updating more frequently, too (I sure do miss this place)...we'll see though.  



	26. Trembling Pink

_This is the last time,_ she promises herself. She swears on the pink of her hair that this is the last.

_If he says no—_

But she doesn't want to think of that. She'll think of it when it comes; she'll feel it even more pungently, then. For now, she'll cling to hope, and cling furiously.

"Will you walk me home tonight?" she asks, and there's the slightest tremor in her voice like a stirring of wind. The pink of her hair is trembling, the color tense as her hands clenched tight by her sides.

"No," he says, without even looking. His back always turned; she can never knock down that wall, no matter how strong she's gotten, or how strong she ever will be.

Just like that and hope is a black balloon floating away into a vanishing sky.

Her face falls, and the sting releases inside her ribcage, familiar. She looks away and swallows the poisonous lump, forcing it down.

She wants to slap him so bad, truly, slap the beauty out of him so that she can slap him again and again without reserve.

But she can't, because he'll always be beautiful no matter how much she wants to slap him. He'll always be something she can't have, even this close. She hates dreams that taunt, because those are the wickedest of all. _At least when dreams are far away, you can almost forget them_, she thinks ruefully.

But he's so close, and she can't reach him still. Her fingers slip away at his hard black edges and his hungry shadows.

"Good night, Sasuke-kun," she says, and can't help the wobble or the thickness of her voice.

_You'll never know this was the last._

* * *

wow, this is really old...I didn't even know I had it in my computer until I was browsing my documents. So I thought I might as well post it up, since I can't seem to produce anything satisfactory as of late --; 


	27. Shatter

so it doesn't really make sense, but when does anything ever?

* * *

Like a piece of shattered art, she discovers him, all tangled bloody limbs and ferocious boy smile. The smell of burnt wood and blood is strong in her nostrils as she quietly approaches his prone form. She can tell he doesn't like her coming so close, but his body is useless and all he can do is glare at her with those jumping blue eyes.

Even with his last breaths shaking out, he is fighting to live.

She kneels gently beside him, staring directly into his unbroken gaze. He stares back, like he's struggling to hold onto this last piece of his existence.

"Sorry," she says. First things first, apologies should be put out of the way. Stiff proprieties always lead to wasted moments. She's beaten around the bush too much of her life, and now that she's come to the end of a road, she's realized the value of being blunt. He manages a little fanged smile and she imagines he might have made some witty remark had his failing body allowed.

But it doesn't, so she's satisfied with the crackling of the embers still burning around her.

"Maybe if we'd met in another time," she muses. "I think we could have been friends."

He looks back at her, and there is a simple clarity in the blue that makes her think that he agrees. Of course, it could all be her imagination, since death has a tendency to warp reality and time and all preconceived human notions into silly sentiments.

A little sigh falls from her lips like a shadow. Her hand flutters like a pale petal over his bloody brow and his blonde hair straggled all around his pretty face. It rests on the slope of his forehead, but he doesn't blink. Just looks at her, ever blue, never flickering.

"Don't worry," she murmurs, when she sees the panic rising in his eyes as he realizes that there's not much time left, that these are the last moments. "You went out with a bang."

A smile curls the last words of her sentence. A sharp bitterness seeps into his expression and his mouth quirks weakly into a smirk. He'd imprinted that much, if not more, on her; she can appreciate at least his tortured philosophies, if not his entire beauty.

She bends low and her shag of pink hair falls like a small curtain to their stage as she kisses him, once, sweetly, on his cold lips. It's not romantic, even though it's sweet; she lets him taste her sorrow. Another apology because the first one hadn't been quite enough to explain this hollow feeling in her chest.

The world will lose something beautiful when he's gone.

He holds her eyes for one last long moment after the kiss has dissipated, and there's the echo of a question in his eyes, bordering on a plea for reassurance; why he asks it from her, a stranger, his greatest enemy, she can almost understand. There's an invisible bond that knits strangers in a way that blood can't weave brothers and sisters.

In that last understanding, she sees the flicker of calm that passes over his cloudless lake eyes as they finally shut close. Tired.

She prays he has found peace, because she is still floundering in these burning woods and her eyes can's see entirely straight, what with the smoke riddling her eyes and his last smile pricking her heart.

As she sets his beautiful body aflame and watches the great flower of fire bloom, her eyes reflect the growing light, and she thinks, _This is where we shatter. This is when we begin to live. _

-

a final bang, my gift to you

* * *

dysfunctional, nonsensical deisaku...it feels nice to get the words flowing again. 


	28. Desperation Does Funny Things

"You wouldn't _understand,_" she hisses, pushing him away. The flashing green in her eyes has turned to flint sparking her bitterness; and she is bitter, oh so bitter.

But he doesn't know what bitterness is, or he knows it too well, and the next thing she knows he has calmly pinned her against the wall. The edge of her anger is wiped out in this momentary shock. There is something eerie in his eyes and his expressionless gaze that holds her still, trembling like a furious butterfly struggling against its own fragility.

There is something_ different_ about the way he looks at her this time; there is something changed and disturbed in the normal black that chills her because—

Because it looks so familiar.

(she has seen it in the mirror)

And his look is piercing straight into her fevered soul, and he speaks words that send shivers down her spine:

"Then _let _me."

She has no reply. Her mouth hangs slightly open and her eyes are frantic, bubbling, filled with too much emotion that she may explode if he stays this close for too long.

"Show me how to understand." And the words aren't flat; there is something powerful and mysterious driving them into her fast-beating heart as he brings his face closer, sending the spear-gaze deeper.

She represses a bodily shudder and swallows the lump that has formed in her throat. His gaze does not relent.

"Sai—" she chokes, because she's afraid she won't have the answer to this question. There's a strange mixture of hot and cold and fear swirling around in her stomach as she stands frozen, his face close enough that if she wanted to, she could kiss him (is it wrong to want to?). His eyes still hold hers steadily.

"I want to understand," he whispers.

And she knows what it is that moves behind his eyes, what is making her dizzy from this intoxicating proximity.

_Desperation._

* * *

I imagined this would happen between them xD hmm..I've been writing a lot of saisaku lately. should probably switch things up a little._  
_


	29. Question

With her, it's always a question.

As simple as: _Will you walk me home?_

(Girlish memories.)

Or: _Why are you so cold?_

(Bitter realization.)

Or sometimes just a look in her eyes, a trembling green. _Will you care?_

It's annoying and burdensome, the way she throws these questions at you in those in-between moments, catching you off-guard. They always tend to linger, even when she's not so conspicuously there.

_You're…annoying._

You don't try to spare her feelings. You have a very distinct and hard-headed philosophy that leading someone on is wrong. You crush her now so it won't hurt so much later, though you're not quite sure _whose_ pain will be the lighter.

Maybe you had a little guilt earlier; but that's only natural. After all, she's a girl (_only_ a girl), and you treated her like dirt. Of course you're allowed to feel slightly responsible. But then you learn to pin the blame on someone else, to push away that nagging feeling till it joins the muted, incessant ache deep in your chest, and your guilt no longer has a name reminiscent of cherries.

You never asked for her persistence. You'd both be much better off without it, at least in your opinion. Less heartbreak and unnecessary tears, less guilt, less_questions._

But she persists anyways. Just like she disregards every other one of your brush-offs, cold shoulders and high-collared shirts, paper fans stitched onto stiff backs. It's the reason she still manages to smile the patient, tender smile every morning by the red bridge; like you don't break her heart seventeen times a day. It's inconceivable to you, but she still does it.

And it's unconceivable to you, now, why you are going against your philosophy when you let her do this.

When you let her hold you like this and you don't say a word or make the faintest protest. Your throat fails to form the harsh noise that would send the look of pain shooting through her eyes (so familiar).

And it's you asking the questions, this time around. Why don't you have the strength to push her away?

You tell yourself it's because you're tired, because you're sick, because she clings too tightly anyways, and wouldn't let go even if you tried to pry her off with a wrench.

But it's more than your tiredness, more than your sickness, more than her tenacity. Sure, you are broken in more places than one. You've just awoken from a practical coma; of course you're weak.

But you have more than enough strength to push her away (because really, she isn't clinging that tightly; more like gentle arms wrapping around that remind you strangely of your mother). It's your will that is weak.

You see Naruto, an orange flicker out of the corner of your eye, standing apart from the two of you; and you want to reach out and shake him and ask him why you are doing this, scream at him for letting this happen (always, always someone else to blame). But there's a very strange expression settled on his face, like he's had a sinking epiphany, and before you have the chance to look him in the eye, he is backing away, receding, gone.

And now you are alone with her. Just you and her gentle wrapping arms, her pink hair raining against your shoulder like willow leaves.

You're almost scared, but quickly rein in the fear before it fully ignites. You're afraid because you feel like you are losing control, every moment that draws out in this quiet hospital room. The line is slipping a little further from your grasp and if you aren't careful, you might lose it in this deluge and sea of her scent. (It would be sweet and comforting if not for your inner panic, which you somehow fail to show.) These questions shouldn't be running through your mind and you _shouldn't_ be allowing this.

So then, why?

Maybe you're indulging yourself with this act. Maybe the guilt has finally grown so large that you can't stand its looming shadow over you anymore. Maybe it's pity; just for a moment you might let her dream. No harm can come from that, can it?

But that isn't true.

This will become a cruel torture, you know. Letting her touch this dream and hold it close and whisper soft reassurances in its ear, letting her think even for a moment that it might someday become a reality; it's cruel. You're cruel.

Because you know what the future holds, and none of it involves the soft, revolving shades of spring.

And yet, even as these thoughts slip slowly through your mind, the murkiest river, you still fail to find the strength to push away. Your feeble justification sickens you. After all, there is no changing a black heart.

So what will breaking one more mean?

* * *

sort of inspired from that one scene..I think it was after they came back from the whole gaara fiasco? and sasuke wakes up, and sakura holds him, yada yada. 


	30. The Principle of Exclusion

Naruto knows what it's like to not be included.

He knows what it's like to be outside the circle, looking in; that unbearable burning feeling in the pit of his stomach that makes his toes wither and his fists clench impossibly tight. He's painfully familiar with the loud jeers and derisive laughing that drive him nearer to the Nine Tail's cage, closer to understanding that animal malice seeping from behind dripping bars.

And yet it's different this time around. Different in that it's a quieter simmering, not so violent; but a no less crushing realization that settles deeply on his chest and makes it just a little harder to breathe. He never expected it to be this way; not with the people he had always counted on to make him feel human, the people who had included him. It's more painful this way.

It's a principle, he knows. The principle of exclusion. Two beings cannot occupy the same niche.

He cannot be what Sasuke is. He can't hold that place in her heart.

He'll always be just a little further away from that center, hovering over a shadow that holds a greater grip on her mellow smile. Held at bay by unknown forces, no matter how hard he struggles against them, with his most hopeless of hopes; he'll never reach that center.

He's understood this from the very beginning. She never led him on; in fact she punched and yelled him away with her fists. But he'd been stupid then (still stupid, now), and he'd let himself continue to hope. After all, what was his life but a bunch of messy hopes pasted together by desperate, clumsy fingers? All he had to back them up were his brash 'dattebayos!' and abounding foolishness.

Well, he'd let himself be a fool; and look where he'd ended up.

Outside again.

Her sweet smile, his carefully straight-line mouth –_ But Sasuke, I see your smile._

Her tight clinging, his stiff body and turned head – _But Sasuke, I see your eyes._

Her sobbing, his weary expression – _But Sasuke, I see your relief._

And him, looking, but her ironically unaware – _But Sasuke, I see what you hide._

Theirs is an entire world. It's undeniable, this planet they've created. He's outside the orbit, a lost astronaut with not enough line to reach the surface, and barely enough oxygen to survive the trip.

But he can't hate them for it, no matter how suffocating that feeling sitting on his chest grows as each day passes. It's natural, and it's a law.

And Naruto, number one surprise ninja rule-breaker, realizes there are just some rules you can't break.

* * *

I read some fics lately that have made me ache for Naruto. :/ poor boy! It was definitely a different experience writing from Naruto's pov. 


	31. Maybe I Was Wrong

* * *

"_Murderer!"_ she wants to scream at him. _"Animal! Monster!"_

She wants to scream the words so badly that her whole throat burns with black fire.

And yet in the face of the monster himself she can make no sound. Her whole body is trembling, and though she would love to blame it on rage, anger is not the only reason her body quivers like a leaf.

_(with his eyes, he shakes the forest to the ground)_

Sakura likes to think of herself as a fairly rational, unbiased person. But this hate that swells violently within her, that makes her dizzy from merely looking at him– shocks her. How can she hate this person so entirely? Without even _knowing_ him?

She _hates _him.

_Hates_ who he is.

Because he is absolutely nothing like what she expected him to be.

She learned the story in gruesome tidbits, gathered from snatches of whispered conversation that she clung hungrily to. He was a murderer. He slaughtered every member of his family in cold blood and never once felt remorse. In a single night, he reduced the mighty Uchiha clan to a sad shadow of its former glory, a mere symbol; a flat paper fan to be sympathized with, no longer feared. He left Konoha and the shattered remains of his little brother's life.

It was all so perfectly despicable, it could have been a soap opera. And it is all so terrible that she cannot imagine the man standing calmly before her, breathtaking, to be _Him_.

It is like reading a book and trying hopelessly to translate the characters to reality. Even illustrations cannot testify to the truth of presence. Fiction is fiction. But when "fiction" becomes reality, nightmare becomes waking—what happens then?

Now he stands so real and alive before her that she can barely breathe. Only seven meters separate her and the manifestation of all Sasuke's hatred. The simple magnitude of the situation knocks the breath out of her lungs and squeezes her ribcage, tight, tight, nearly popping.

Perhaps if he had been some deranged psychopath, an honest maniac with no control over his bloodlust, a man unrepentant because he did not know the extent of his sin – maybe then she could have pitied him. Maybe then she could have found it in some small sliver of her heart to forgive him.

But no, he stands as something beautiful, and all the more horrible for it. He is a cold and calculating murderer who, with his porcelain face and ruby eyes, has the capacity to hold a heart. And yet, with that same face and those same eyes, he chooses with unfathomable dignity to discard the heart, and call it trash.

This is what makes her hate him so.

Her knuckles ache from tightening into crackling fists, and she glares at this man, willing for it not to be true.

_Why?_, she longs to ask him._ Why would you do such a thing?_

_Were you unhappy? Were you truly miserable? There must be a reason._

Because the reason offered by those ghostly wisps of conversation cannot suffice. _"To test my capacity." _There must be a more profound explanation that will uncover the core of this twisted, hateful, _compelling_ paradox of a man.

_What is the truth?_

She stares fiercely at him, at those complacent red eyes, the strange and tragic wrinkles that crease his otherwise young face; searching for something, anything that will quell the inexplicable ache inside her ribcage. She wants an answer; she wants to know the truth.

And suddenly he is returning her gaze with a frightening intensity that turns her world upside down.

Too late she remembers the warning that Kakashi had given her. Already the world is changing, splitting, stretching at the seams; she can't remember what is real anymore.

"_Whatever you do, don't look into his eyes."_

-

She stands at the rocky outcropping where she imagines he must have lain in pain, coughing up butterflies of blood, breathing his last ragged breath. This is where he died; or so she was told. This is where Sasuke's life was finally "fulfilled."

She holds back a snort at the thought. In her mind, she tries to recreate the scene.

She imagines there must have been some exchange of words. No doubt an accusation on Sasuke's part, and some hoarse screaming, maybe. The lightning clash of swords, some terrible jutsus she could never fathom, and red, red eyes. Living hells.

Perhaps Sasuke had been smiling when he'd run the sword through his brother's gut in a dramatic sweep. Perhaps he'd been screaming out in unadulterated hatred, all the words he'd always wanted his brother to hear, for all the times his brother had never acknowledged him.

Perhaps he'd been crying. (She doesn't know why, but this image is the clearest, most real, in her head.)

She doesn't know. Her fists tighten and her eyes squeeze shut. She had expected to feel something upon coming here. Maybe something akin to relief, or some long-awaited lightening of her heart. Some sort of _closure_, even when this wasn't her fight. (But that wasn't true. It was the fight of her life; always chasing after the shadow boy who was always chasing after the intangible _Man_…)

But no, just as always, it is nothing like she expects.

She never in a million years expected this aching sadness blooming in her gut, seizing her entirely. She swallows hard, the sudden thick lump in her throat making her a little angry – but still, the overlying sorrow is thick as the blanket of clouds grumbling above.

_Why do I…feel sad?_

She wants to curse him, but can't find it in her heart to do so. Instead, she curses the grey skies and her own inescapable weakness. The beginning of a slight drizzle sends goose bumps dancing up her arms. She lets the shiver run fully through her, remembering the same sensation his eyes had sparked eternities ago. A reluctant half-smile settles on her lips.

_Maybe…maybe you deserve some peace, too._

Even as a murderer, an animal, a monster.

And maybe, she can't help thinking (hoping?), just maybe, they had all gotten it terribly wrong.

* * *

And the irony is, they HAVE got it all wrong! aha. yeah..just recently caught up with the naruto manga (if you don't know what's going on, the last line probably won't make as much sense). the turn of events concerning itachi's motives totally caught me by surprise. sigh. so sad. my love for itachi increased exponentially, hahaha.


	32. Thank You

He had to be carried home.

His blonde hair was nearly brown with dust; his body littered with cuts and bruises; his eyes painted a weary shade of blue. There was a tiredness she had never seen in him before, a great exhaustion that had somehow dimmed the vitality she had for so long associated with Naruto.

But the important thing was that _he came back_.

She wouldn't have cared if he had returned, defeated. She wouldn't even have minded if he had returned a coward, for once afraid for _himself_. (But this was not Naruto's way, and never would be.)

She wouldn't have minded, as long as he returned.

She wanted to tell him this, and many more things. And yet she could not find the words to express the simultaneous tightening and expanding of her chest at the sight of his beaten face transformed by delight at finally receiving his hero's welcome.

He was lifted high onto the shoulders of villagers who had once spat on the syllables of his name, thrown into the perfectly blue sky. In this moment, he was allowed to be a child again, a child whose dream had finally come true.

She wanted to weep.

There were a million things to say to him. She waded through the crowd without even realizing where her feet were taking her (_to him)_. Suddenly he was before her, saying her name with a look of endearing uncertainty.

Her first instinct was to punch him and tell him what an idiot he was. Which she promptly did.

His "Ouch, Sakura-chan!" was familiar enough to make her believe for a moment that nothing had happened. She had to force away the smile that crept traitorously onto her lips.

It was easy to keep the smile away; the rubble around them was staggering. Heaps of rocks and broken walls littered the area. Sticks of wood that had once been roofs were cast on the ground like hastily abandoned firewood. But most pressing of all were the disbelieving faces of the survivors and those miraculously reawakened, as if from a terrible dream. It was irrefutable evidence that it had, indeed, happened. Pain had visited them—had indelibly marked them.

But it was over, and somehow, they had made it through. They had survived.

She didn't know whether to cry or laugh. Instead her arms acted on their own accord, drawing his dirty head close to her. He smelled salty and warm, like the sea. She could feel his shock and uncertainty, but she paid no heed. There were too many things to tell him.

Her mind searched for the words, searched for some way to convey this very important thing sitting heavily on her chest. And then through the haze of memory and relief and remorse and disbelief, she found them.

Her lips curved into a small smile. (She would allow herself one more.)

The words he had first given her, she would now give to him.

-

"_Thank you."_

* * *

Yes, the last sentence is referring to the scene of Sasuke's departure from Konoha. I just thought it was interesting that Sasuke gave those words to Sakura, and then Sakura gave them to Naruto...hm.

Anyways, based off the chapter concluding the Pain arc, when Naruto returns from the battle. Starting to warm up to Narusaku...there are definitely a LOT of Narusaku hints in the recent manga. my inner fangirl is still hoping for sasusaku though XD


	33. Disappointment

Perhaps if he had been a better man, he would have offered more than a dubious smile and half-baked words.

"It's going to be all right" – he had said in a surprisingly self-assured tone. He'd said it so authoritatively, as if it were a mandate from heaven (he _had_ to, with the way she _looked_ at him with those pleading green eyes), but wasn't it all a ruse?

It was easy to act like a hero. Just add dramatic backlighting, melodramatic music, maybe an artistic splattering of blood or two, and the stage was set. He'd had enough of those moments for them to lose their magic (Naruto could keep them for himself, thank you), and he'd discovered, through plenty of unwanted experience, that it was in his best interest to avoid such set-ups. After the lights dimmed and the curtains drew shut, there were always, always the unaccounted consequences to donning the hero's garb.

(The chains of promise. Hubris. The crown of thorns. Guilt. The imminence of failure. And—)

Disappointment. It was something he had grown accustomed to, something he very nearly expected. If he or someone else wasn't disappointed, then something must be amiss. He had come to memorize the face of disappointment; that crumbling of an expression so delicate it could be considered art.

He'd seen it on her face, many times. She would smile, but it was full of that false brightness that made him want to grimace. She would act like she didn't notice, or didn't care; but disappointment had a way of bleeding through no matter how thickly the wound was bound.

He had snubbed her, to be sure. Unintentionally, but deliberately. Not unkindly, but cruelly all the same. She was a bright kunoichi, yes, but the real potential lay in the boys. Everyone could see it: they were a different sort of ninja. They were born to be heroes. The kinds of heroes who would be remembered generations later, when the regal noses in the mountain-side had worn away, and the craggy eyebrows had softened to dust.

He felt obligated to give them special training and pay extra attention to their progress. It was his duty to them, to the people of Konoha, to himself, and even to her, to do so. She was just another casualty to their story.

* * *

The fight on the hospital roof was never supposed to happen. Or maybe it was inevitable– but she shouldn't have been there. She should have been somewhere else, doing what normal girls do, like painting her nails a pretty pink or curling her hair. He shouldn't have had to come to the rescue, to turn away disaster in the nick of time. That was the hero's job, and he was not a hero.

But he found himself on the stage again, playing the hero's part that had been shoved, most unceremoniously, onto him. The words had left his mouth before he could stop himself.

"It's going to be all right. Things will go back to normal soon." (Of course accompanied by his trade-mark smile.)

Such silly words. How could she believe them?

But she did, somehow. The tears on her cheeks dried in tracts on her cheeks, and she smiled a tremulous little smile. Beautiful.

His chest almost swelled with pride before he remembered he was wearing something that didn't belong on him (and that he didn't _want_). The feeling quickly deflated and fled, leaving him grey, morose, and feeling more than a little filthy.

He turned away from her hopeful gaze, praying he would be fast enough not to see the disappointment that would inevitably come crashing down upon her eyelids.

* * *

Another old piece, with others to come, lol. I'm surprised at how much I wrote back then...

I think I wrote this a while ago after rereading/watching that scene where Kakashi comforts Sakura after the boys fight. That was so sad :(


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